If that means looking for stocks that have been beaten down and forgotten -- but are fundamentally and technically capable of a substantial rise, than I must be a contrarian. Does it really matter if those stocks come from the oil industry, the tech sector, gold or the Internet services?

A good investment opportunity is a good investment opportunity. Period.

Yet there seems to be an assumption in the investment community that anyone who makes money in tech stocks or, worse yet, Internet stocks, isn't really a "contrarian." Rather, they are a part of the leftover Wall Street herd that still believes all dot-com stocks will someday rise again to $80 a share.

That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. And it's time to dispel that myth.

In early March, in an essay published by The Daily Reckoning, we took a look at E-Loan Inc., an Internet stock on the rise, as a potential investment opportunity. Talk about being a contrarian and going against the grain. For three years Internet stocks have been the butt of everyone's jokes.

Yet, E-Loan Inc., an online lending company, brought in over $100 million in sales last year and realized more than $10 million in net income. At the time, it was selling for 12.8 times earnings, 1.32 times sales and its revenues were up over 50% from a year ago.

It hardly resembled the dot-bombs that blew up in 1999 and 2000. And that was precisely my point back in March. E-Loan was making a profit, had solid fundamentals and was growing its business.

But there was something else about E-Loan that caught my attention.

Over a 10-day span the stock fell 14%. As a trader, this intrigued me. Why was a stock as fundamentally sound as E-Loan falling in price so abruptly?

To answer that question I pulled up three of my most trusted technical charts. I saw that over an eight-month span, E-Loan stock rose 94%. And after doing a little more digging, it was obvious this recent fall was nothing more than a bunch of investors taking profits.

Fundamentally, E-Loan was as solid as ever. And technically, E-Loan was oversold and ready for a rebound. This was a no-brainer. E-Loan was almost a sure bet to rise.

If you took my advice and bought shares of E-Loan in early March, you made 40.7% profits in the past five weeks. Not a bad return for a little over a month's time.

As an investor or a trader, you should strive to find fundamentally and technically sound stocks, like E-Loan, in beaten-up sectors of the market. And as a contrarian, it's your duty to find these kinds of stocks -- the ones everyone else forgets about or simply refuses to look at.

That's exactly what your "gloomy" editors at The Daily Reckoning did when they recommended you buy gold in the late 1990s when the Wall Street heard really was stampeding. With irrational exuberance sweeping the market by storm, it was only a matter of time before the bubble burst.

The U.S. Dollar Index peaked at 121.29 late in 2000 (right now it's at 100.36) and the NASDAQ, Dow and S&P 500 were all outrageously overvalued by any historical perspective. It made perfect sense to buy gold stocks in 1999.

But only a few brave souls had the guts to buy then. Investing in gold in 1999 meant going against the crowd. It meant taking the risk of looking silly in front of your peers. It meant finding the courage to do what made sense, not what was popular. It meant you avoided serious losses in overbought stocks - and steady gains as gold rose from a $253 low to $325 where it sits today.

Looking back, you'd be hard-pressed to find any gold stock that hasn't at least tripled since the late '90s. It paid to invest in gold when no one else was. And it paid to invest in E-Loan, a hated Internet stock, five weeks ago.

Still, many investors missed out on E-Loan simply because of its title as a tech or Internet stock. Oh well. Too bad for them.

Last I checked it wasn't against any domestic or international law to invest in gold and tech at the same time. And it certainly doesn't go against the contrarian mantra of finding winning stocks in neglected sectors of the market -- no matter what those sectors are. In the last three weeks, I've recommended several Internet stocks and junior gold miners to my readers.

Both have done well. Imagine that...

Maybe I don't fit the mold of a typical contrarian. I use technical analysis in conjunction with fundamentals to find stocks on the rise. I look to the Internet sector as easily as I do the gold sector for great investment opportunities. My picks aren't always popular among my peers.

But you know what? I could care less what people think about me as long as we're making money - whatever class of investor that puts me in.

James Boric,
for The Daily Reckoning
www.dailyreckoning.com

Editor's note: James Boric is the editor of the small-cap advisory letter Penny Stock Fortunes, where he looks for great companies at penny stock prices. James also writes a weekly e-mail called the CXS Alert.