The latest issue of Barron's featured the results of the weekly paper's stock-picking contest for college students. Derek Zoch, a student at Wharton, had a strategy that smacks of classic contrarianism in the tradition of David Dreman. He looked for stocks making the largest moves, up or down, on each day and then bet against them. This strategy (with, of course, a huge amount of luck) led him to a 34.94% gain in six months.

Does this strategy make sense? It might. Jim Cramer has said that the market never rewards the best news and enough, and never punishes the worst news badly enough. But contrarians like David Dreman would argue that it's just the opposite: the stocks that are disappointing investors the most are often the best bargains. And, as Zoch bet, stocks making great gains are likely to be overrated.

Here is a hardcore contrarian strategy that you could try: each day for 2 weeks, buy the biggest % loser on the NYSE, and short the biggest gainer. Hold each stock for six months, and then close all the positions and see if you beat the market. Interestingly, one might extrapolate from Cramer's remarks that his approach could be just the opposite.