I laughed a little at this post (and at the responses) because Contra happened to be what I picked as a core fund 25 years ago. Will Danoff, the fund manager, is quite good at risk/reward. It in fact has outperformed the S&P slightly over the last 10 years, but as several has indicated it is more of a large growth fund rather than a blend, although it has "value" characteristics (or growth at a reasonable price--for instance a extremely large holding, in fact the largest, is Berkshire).
It is one of the reasons I was able to retire early, although I did commit the sin of active management in '01 when the large cap PEs went to the moon (>60), so I moved half of gains to Fidelity Low Price (a midcap fund). This was driven purely by the clear data that mid/low cap blend/value were valued about 10-20% of the S&P/technology. In the recovery, this happened to pay off, big time (luck but also a pure value tweak to my general allocation).
Now, I probably would not choose Contra largely because it is a victim of its own success; it's returns have moved closer and closer to the S&P largely because of Contra's huge size, which overwhelms Danoff's picking ability. I would consider an index, a value index, and a small/mid cap index if I were investing now, rather than 25 years ago.
Over the years, I used gains from it and Low-Price to steadily diversify overseas, into biotech, and several other niche areas; this also helped me retire early, although a few like materials and high yield foreign were drags.
Great fund but not sure I would use it as a base today. I've considered replacing it, but it's done well enough the last 5 & 10 years that it doesn't seem worth the bother; and with the inexorable rise of the S&P P/E, I consider it less risky now than the S&P index.
Beta 0.97
R2 0.77
Sharpe Ratio 1.69
