Brett Owens

Brett Owens began trading stocks profitably in between classes at Cornell University, where he graduated cum laude with a degree in Operations Research and Industrial Engineering (ORIE). His degree is quite popular with Wall Street recruiters but he couldn’t stand the thought of grinding it out 80 or more hours a week in a cubicle. So Brett moved to San Francisco and joined the software industry, where he co-founded two SaaS (software as a service) companies that today serve more than 26,000 business users. He and his companies have been featured in leading publications such as The Economist, Inc Magazine, Forbes, The Chicago Tribune, Entrepreneur Magazine, and The Globe and Mail. He then invested his software profits in dividend-paying stocks. Brett used his ORIE background to develop a “calculated contrarian” approach to the markets. Instead of merely buying issues that look promising on the surface, he employs a “second-level thinking” approach to identify and buy income-paying stocks when their yields are highest and downside is limited – thanks to market overreactions. Today, Brett lives in Sacramento, California with his wife and two daughters, and serves as the Chief Investment Strategist at Contrarian Outlook.