Contrarian investing?

This is something I have been rather interested in. Has anyone ever had any experience doing this? Tips? Pitfalls? Am reading a bit of B. Graham before putting any money down to get a better baseline of understanding (advice from prior question). Thanks for any help you can provide; Happy Thanksgiving.
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My estimate is that whatever money I use for this endeavor should not be needed for 6 years. Further, retirement accounts or anything like that will not be invested in this (prefer index funds and timed retirement funds for that). Essentially, this is play money.

The principle of contrarian investing is about 'buying quality stocks when nobody want it'. as the term goes, there are two main features that you MUST consider:
1-pick quality stocks
2-buy at discounted price

fundamentally, you can use various key financial ratios to start screening which stock worth your hard earned money. from there, you can go to the next level by further study how they perform qualitatively. Look here for more info:

How to Pick A Good Stock
http://www.stock-investment-made-easy.com/good-stock-pick.html
Guide in Analyzing Stock
http://www.stock-investment-made-easy.com/analyzing-company.html

then, you must study how much the stock worth. to do this stock valuation, you have to calculate intrinsic value. once you got it, buy the stock when it is at its margin of safety, either it was discounted than its intrinsic value, or discounted from the past historical prices. Look here for details:

How to Calculate Intrinsic Value
http://www.stock-investment-made-easy.com/calculate-intrinsic-value.html
How to Determine Margin of Safety
http://www.stock-investment-made-easy.com/margin-of-safety.html

now the last point but the most important things, how you can make money from it? look, good company will grow over time. if you invest for your retirement, you can sell the stock after 20 years with as much as 30% return per year! doesn't it sounds good? and besides, you'll be earning dividends year after year, which will also grow annually!

Penny Stocks, Short Cut to Wealth
http://www.stock-investment-made-easy.com/penny-stock-investing.html

If you're not Warren Buffet or if you don't have a sufficient financial backup I would advise you to forget it: don't try to beat the market it will break you if you're weak!

A plain contrarian investing is not advisable, a contrarian investing backed by understanding of stock's fundamental is recomendable though. For example if you where to go by contrarian then as of now you should put a sell on Microsoft, which is not correct on seeing fundemntals. On the other hand if you see a stock with say a p/e of 1X and you are convinced with the future strategy of that compnay then you will strike treasure in that stock in 2 - 3 years time. So never forget fundamentals, ir-respective of your strategy.

Try Humphrey B. Neill: "The Art of Contrary Thinking" - he introduced the concept. Still the best book on the subject.

Read Mark Hulbert's columns on MarketWatch. He talks fairly often about contrarian investing.
http://www.marketwatch.com/News/Story/Mark+Hulbert

tried it.so/so results.....
currently using the ;;the little book that beats the market''..........I am in year one....it is three years to see if it works,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,tell you in two years...........

In finance, a contrarian is one who attempts to profit by investing in a manner that differs from the conventional wisdom, when the consensus opinion appears to be wrong.

A contrarian believes that certain crowd behavior among investors can lead to exploitable mispricings in securities markets. For example, widespread pessimism about a stock can drive a price so low that it overstates the company's risks, and understates its prospects for returning to profitability. Identifying and purchasing such distressed stocks, and selling them after the company recovers, can lead to above-average gains. Similarly, widespread optimism can result in unjustifiably high valuations that will eventually lead to drops, when those high expectations don't pan out. Avoiding investments in over-hyped investments reduces the risk of such drops
Contrarians are sometimes thought of as perma-bearsā€”market participants who are permanently biased to a bear market view. However, a contrarian does not necessarily have a negative view of the overall stock market, nor does he believe that it is always overvalued, or that the conventional wisdom is always wrong. Rather, a contrarian seeks opportunities to buy or sell specific investments when the majority of investors appear to be doing the opposite, to the point where that investment has become mispriced. While more "buy" candidates are likely to be identified during market declines (and vice versa), these opportunities can occur during periods when the overall market is generally rising or falling.Contrarian investing is related to value investing in that the contrarian is also looking for mispriced investments and buying those that appear to be undervalued by the marketContrarians are attempting to exploit some of the principles of behavioral finance, and there is significant overlap between these fields. For example, studies in behavioral finance have demonstrated that investors as a group tend to overweight recent trends when predicting the future; a poorly-performing stock will remain bad, and a strong performer will remain strong. This lends credence to the contrarian's belief that investments may drop "too low" during periods of negative news, due to incorrect assumptions by other investors regarding the long-term prospects for the company.

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