It has been our great pleasure each year since 1963 to host the Contrary Opinion Forum - a unique investment conference founded by seminal contrarian thinkers Humphrey Neill and Jim Fraser to encourage the exchange of ideas and instill the notion of thinking for oneself in the process of making investment decisions. Our 48th annual Forum was held at the lovely Basin Harbor Club in Vergennes, Vermont in early October.

I am honored and humbled by the quality of the speakers who give so generously of their time and talent, as well as the quality of our guests. More often than not, folks attending say that their most valuable and enjoyable time at the conference is at meals and receptions, renewing longstanding friendships and making new connections, but our speakers provide the fodder for conversation.

Traditionally, the November issue of Ruminations of the Contrary Investor has offered a summary of the conference. This year, Walter Deemer, a seasoned stock market analyst with more than 40 years of experience and a truly distinguished track record (and a long time friend of the Forum as both speaker and attendee), has made my task easy! Walter's Market Strategies and Insights, published on October 14th, does a far finer job than I ever could of distilling key takeaways from the conference. With his permission, his comments (unedited) on the Forum follow.

David Fuller's view At Mrs Fuller's and my urging, Alex Seagle chaired the Forum's concluding panel session on Friday, to allow more Q&A. He did this admirably and then posed the key question, without prior warning: "What contrary opinion recommendation would each member of the panel make?"

I hope he summarises the answers in his December letter because, try as I do, I can only remember my own answer.

Some of you will have already seen Walter Deemer's review of the Forum, which is generous to your scribe, so you may wish to head straight to Alex's concluding Words to Consider section. This droll quote is my favourite:

"An economist's guess is liable to be as good as anybody else's."
Will Rogers