You know why an analyst sometimes go all in on contrarian opinions? Because if they turn out to have been right, they get all the recognition for having been the first to see a new trend. And if they were wrong, then it’s just one more time they weren’t 100% right. The only drawback is that there are only so many times you can credibly claim a totally contrarian point. Some day nobody will listen anymore… so you better be lucky and turn out to have been right in one of the first attempts, like Marc Faber, Doctor Doom. If you’re right every so often, people will keep listening, even if you’re only point is that you’re different from the rest.
A UBS analyst is calling for the breakup of Hewlett-Packard arguing that the separate parts are way more valuable than the whole.