A contra market is stock, or an entire sector, that does the opposite of what the overall market is doing. So when the market is in the tank, these stocks are up. Doesn’t necessarily mean they are randomly doing well when everything else sucks...it just means they aren’t really affected by a crappy market.
So...your utilities, pharmaceutical drug companies...staples, if you will. We need them. We aren’t going to turn off our heat in January because our E*Trade account is down a couple hundred bucks. We are going to keep paying for it because...we need it.