Website of the day: FinancialNext.com

Wall Street is replete with cliches about the importance of going against the common thinking: Sheep getting slaughtered, lemmings running, J.P. Morgan's shoe-shine boy, contrarian investing, etc. Then there are the cliches urging investors to do just opposite: Don't fight the trend, the trend is your friend, etc.

There are entire books advocating these two schools of thought. There's David Dreman'sContrarian Investment Strategies and Charles Mackay's Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds that discuss examples of herd behavior, mass hysteria and, in some cases, the effectiveness of simply betting against mass sentiment. Then there's James Surowiecki's The Wisdom of Crowds that talks about how the crowds are so often right.

FinancialNext.com is putting this question to the test: Is it better to follow the crowd or fight it? There, you can vote on questions such as "Will there be more new homes sales in February than January?" and "Will there be a recession in 2007?" Then, the results will be tabulated, and we will see who was right -- the minority or the majority. This is an interesting idea, but will work best if lots of people vote. So go over there and let us know what you think!