Terms of Service and Privacy Policy
Last updated: August 12, 2024.
Thank you for visiting our digital properties, which include www.contrary.com and research.contrary.com (separately and collectively, the “Site”), owned and operated by Contrary LLC (“Contrary,” “we,” “us,” or “our”).
Please read the following terms and conditions (inclusive of the Privacy Policy, the “Terms”). They govern your use of this Site and its associated services, including Contrary-affiliated newsletters, podcasts, social media and other content distributed via this Site (collectively with the website, the “Services”). By accessing or using the Services in any manner, you agree to be bound by the Terms. We may update the Terms from time to time, and any modifications will be effective immediately upon posting unless we indicate otherwise. If you use the Services after any modifications have been posted, your use will constitute your agreement to such modifications. We suggest that you review these Terms periodically for changes.
You must be at least 18 years old to use our Services. You will comply with all applicable laws, rules and regulations in connection with your use of the Services. You will not violate or attempt to violate the security of the Services or our systems or network security, including, without limitation by (i) accessing data not intended for users of the Services or gaining unauthorized access to an account, server or any other computer system; (ii) attempting to probe, scan or test the vulnerability of a system or network or to breach security or authentication measures; (iii) attempting to interfere with the function of the Services, host or network. You may not “crawl,” “scrape,” or “spider” any portion of the Services (through use of manual or automated means).
Except as otherwise noted on the Services, all content and material on the Services – including information, photos, podcasts, blog or social media posts, videos, graphics, icons, design and overall appearance – are the property of Contrary or its suppliers or licensors, and should not be used, modified or reproduced without our prior written consent. All trademarks, trade names and logos displayed on the Services are the property of Contrary, its affiliates or their third-party owners, and the Services grant no license to them.
You may not download, copy, print, display, perform, reproduce, publish, modify, prepare derivative works from, license, transmit, or distribute any content from the Services in whole or in part, for any public or commercial purpose without prior written consent from Contrary. Contrary grants you a limited, personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable license to access the Site, and to use the content appearing on the Services, solely for personal, internal and non-commercial purposes. Contrary (on behalf of itself and its suppliers and licensors) reserves all rights not expressly granted herein.
The Services are intended solely to provide general information related to Contrary. The Services are not directed at and should not be relied upon by any investor or prospective investor in any investment fund or other investment vehicle managed by Contrary. Contrary does not intend to solicit or make its investment advisory services available to the general public.
Under no circumstance should any information provided via the Services be considered an offer soliciting the purchase or sale of any security or other interest in any investment fund or other investment vehicle managed or mentioned by Contrary, nor should any such information be construed as an offer to provide investment advisory services. Any such offer or solicitation will be made separately and only by means of confidential offering documents specific to the relevant investment fund or other investment vehicle to investors that, among other requirements, meet certain qualifications under federal securities laws. There can be no assurance that Contrary’s investment strategies will be successful or that Contrary’s investment objectives will be achieved. Any investment in a fund or other investment vehicle managed by Contrary involves a high degree of risk, including the risk of a complete loss of investment.
Any Contrary portfolio companies or other investments described or referenced via the Services are not representative of all investments of the funds managed by Contrary, and there can be no assurance that the investments described or referenced will be profitable or that future investments will have similar character or results.
Any opinions expressed via the Services reflect the views of the individual posters and are subject to change. Certain information available via the Services has been obtained from third-party sources, including from portfolio companies of investment funds managed by Contrary. While taken from sources we believe are reliable, Contrary has not independently verified all such information, and Contrary makes no representation or warranty about the accuracy of such information or its suitability for any purpose. The opinions expressed via the Services are not intended to constitute investment, accounting, tax or legal advice; nothing in the Services is a recommendation that you purchase, sell or hold any security or other investment or that you pursue any particular investment strategy. Any charts included in the Services content are provided solely for general informational purposes and should not be relied upon when making an investment decision.
Certain statements made or other information disseminated via the Services by individual Contrary personnel may constitute “forward-looking statements” under the Privacy Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. To the extent any information made available via the Services constitutes a forward-looking statement (which may be identified by use of forward-looking terminology such as “may,” “will,” “should,” “expect,” “anticipate,” “upside,” “potential,” “project,” “estimate,” “intend,” “forecast,” “target,” “believe” or similar terminology), please note that actual events, results or performance may differ materially from those reflected or contemplated by such statement. Contrary disclaims any obligation to update any forward-looking statement in the event it later turns out to be inaccurate, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. Any projections, estimates, forecasts, targets or opinions expressed via the Services are subject to change without notice and may differ from opinions expressed by others.
Past results of Contrary’s managed investment funds or other investment vehicles are not necessarily indicative of future results.
Additional important information about Contrary, including our Form ADV, is available at the SEC’s website, http://www.adviserinfo.sec.gov.
The Services may include content created, prepared or otherwise made available by third parties or a link to or integration with websites operated by third parties. Contrary has no control over any such content or websites and shall have no liability related to such content or websites. The existence of any such content, link or other integration does not constitute an endorsement of the relevant content, website or third party.
You hereby release and hold Contrary harmless from any and all liability arising from your use of any third-party content, website or service.
THE SERVICES, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, ALL CONTENT AND FUNCTIONALITY THEREOF, IS PROVIDED “AS IS,” WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, ANY WARRANTIES OF AVAILABILITY, ACCURACY, COMPLETENESS, USEFULNESS, TITLE, NON-INFRINGEMENT, MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, AND CONTRARY (ON BEHALF OF ITSELF AND ITS SUPPLIERS AND LICENSORS) HEREBY DISCLAIMS ANY AND ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED. NO ADVICE, RESULTS, INFORMATION OR MATERIALS, WHETHER ORAL OR WRITTEN, OBTAINED BY YOU THROUGH THE SERVICES WILL CREATE ANY WARRANTY NOT EXPRESSLY MADE HEREIN. NO CONTENT CAN OR SHOULD BE CONSTRUED AS PROFESSIONAL ADVICE OF ANY KIND (INCLUDING BUSINESS, INVESTMENT, ACCOUNTING, TAX, AND/OR LEGAL ADVICE).
TO THE GREATEST EXTENT PERMITTED UNDER APPLICABLE LAW, IN NO EVENT WILL CONTRARY, ITS AFFILIATES (INCLUDING AFFILIATED FUNDS) OR ANY OF ITS OR THEIR RESPECTIVE DIRECTORS, OFFICERS, EMPLOYEES, AGENTS, SUPPLIERS OR LICENSORS (THE “CONTRARY PARTIES”), BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, EXEMPLARY OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES ARISING FROM OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OF, OR THE INABILITY TO USE, THE SERVICES OR THE CONTENT THEREIN, EVEN IF ANY CONTRARY PARTY HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES. SOME JURISDICTIONS DO NOT ALLOW THE LIMITATION OR EXCLUSION OF LIABILITY SO SOME OF THE ABOVE LIMITATIONS MAY NOT APPLY TO YOU.
These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of California, without regard to the conflicts of laws provisions thereof. In the event of any dispute arising in connection with these Terms, you hereby consent to exclusive jurisdiction and venue in the state and federal courts of San Mateo County, California. The failure of Contrary to exercise or enforce any right or provision of these Terms does not constitute a waiver of such right or provision. If any provision of these Terms is found by a court of competent jurisdiction to be invalid, that provision will be limited or eliminated, to the minimum extent necessary, so that these Terms shall otherwise remain in full force and effect and enforceable. You may not assign these Terms or transfer any of your rights or obligations hereunder without Contrary’s express written consent. These Terms inure to the benefit of Contrary’s successors, assigns and licensees. These Terms are the entire agreement between you and Contrary with respect to the subject matter herein.
We respect your privacy and, whether you are visiting the Services as an investor, founder or member of the general public, you are entitled to the protection of your personal information. Please read this Privacy Policy to learn how we treat your personal information.
By using or accessing our Services in any manner, you acknowledge that you accept the practices and policies outlined below, and you hereby consent that we will collect, use and share your information as described in this Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
This Privacy Policy covers important information and disclosures relating to how we treat Personal Data that we gather when you access or use our Services, but does not cover the practices of companies we don’t own or control or people we don’t manage, nor to the privacy practices of any entity with whom we have an investment relationship, even if you are able to access such entity’s website or service through a link on the Services. It also does not apply to information obtained or disclosed in offline correspondence or in connection with an investment in one of our affiliated investment funds. Please note that you may have additional rights to control the use and disclosure of your Personal Data. Residents of California or the European Union should refer to the relevant subsections below. If you have a disability, you may access this Privacy Policy in an alternative format by contacting privacy@contrary.com.
Use of the term “Personal Data” herein means any information that identifies or relates to a particular individual and also includes information referred to as “personally identifiable information” or “personal information” under applicable data privacy laws, rules or regulations.
This chart details the categories of Personal Data that we collect and have collected over the past 12 months:
| Category of Personal Data | Examples of Personal Data We Collect | Categories of Third Parties With Whom We Share this Personal Data: |
|---|---|---|
| Profile or Contact Data |
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| Device/IP Data |
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| Web Analytics (Google) |
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| Other Identifying Information that You Voluntarily Choose to Provide |
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We collect Personal Data about you from the following categories of sources:
Providing, Customizing and Improving the Site
Corresponding with You
Meeting Legal Requirements and Enforcing Legal Terms
We will not collect additional categories of Personal Data or use the Personal Data we collected for materially different, unrelated or incompatible purposes without providing you notice.
We disclose your Personal Data to the categories of service providers and other parties listed in this section. Depending on state laws that may be applicable to you, some of these disclosures may constitute a “sale” of your Personal Data. For more information, please refer to the state-specific sections below.
Service Providers. These parties help us provide our Services or perform business functions on our behalf. They include:
Parties You Authorize, Access or Authenticate
We may share any Personal Data that we collect with third parties in conjunction with any of the activities set forth under “Meeting Legal Requirements and Enforcing Legal Terms” in the “Our Commercial or Business Purposes for Collecting Personal Data” section above.
Business TransfersAll of your Personal Data that we collect may be transferred to a third party if we undergo a merger, acquisition, bankruptcy or other transaction in which that third party assumes control of our business (in whole or in part). Should one of these events occur, we will make reasonable efforts to notify you before your information becomes subject to different privacy and security policies and practices.
Data that is Not Personal DataWe may create aggregated, de-identified or anonymized data from the Personal Data we collect, including by removing information that makes the data personally identifiable to a particular user. We may use such aggregated, de-identified or anonymized data and share it with third parties for our lawful business purposes, including to analyze, build and improve the Services and promote our business, provided that we will not share such data in a manner that could identify you.
The Services use cookies and similar technologies such as pixel tags, web beacons, clear GIFs and JavaScript (collectively, “Cookies”) to enable our servers to recognize your web browser and tell us how and when you visit and use our Services, to analyze trends, learn about our user base and operate and improve our Services. Cookies are small pieces of data – usually text files – placed on your computer, tablet, phone or similar device when you use that device to access our Services. We may also supplement the information we collect from you with information received from third parties, including third parties that have placed their own Cookies on your device(s). Please note that because of our use of Cookies, the Services does not support “Do Not Track” requests sent from a browser at this time.
We use the following types of Cookies:
You can decide whether or not to accept Cookies through your internet browser’s settings. Most browsers have an option for turning off the Cookie feature, which will prevent your browser from accepting new Cookies, as well as (depending on the sophistication of your browser software) allow you to decide on acceptance of each new Cookie in a variety of ways. You can also delete all Cookies that are already on your device. If you do this, however, you may have to manually adjust some preferences every time you visit our website and some of the Services and functionalities may not work.
To find out more information about Cookies, including information about how to manage and delete Cookies, please visit https://ico.org.uk/for-the-public/online/cookies/ or http://www.allaboutcookies.org/.
We seek to protect your Personal Data from unauthorized access, use and disclosure using appropriate physical, technical, and administrative security measures and storage and processing practices based on the type of Personal Data. For example, the Services use industry standard Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) technology to allow for the encryption of Personal Data you provide to us.
Although we work to protect the security of your account and other data that we hold in our records, please be aware that no method of transmitting data or storing data over the Internet is completely secure. We cannot guarantee the complete security of any data you share with us, and except as expressly required by law, we are not responsible for the theft, destruction, loss or inadvertent disclosure of your information or content.
We retain Personal Data about you for as long as necessary to provide our Services and/or services to you, comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes, or as otherwise permitted or required by applicable law, rule or regulation. When establishing a retention period for specific categories of data, we consider who we collected the data from, our need for the Personal Data, why we collected the Personal Data, and the sensitivity of the Personal Data.
For example, we retain your device/IP data for as long as we need it to ensure that our systems are working appropriately, effectively, and efficiently. We may further retain information in an anonymous or aggregated form where that information would not identify you personally.
We do not knowingly collect or solicit Personal Data about children under 16 years of age, except with parental consent. If we learn that we have collected personal information from an individual under the 16 years of age without parental consent, we will delete such information as quickly as possible. If you believe that a child under 16 years of age may have provided Personal Data to us, please contact us at privacy@contrary.com.
If you are a resident of California, you have the rights set forth in this section. If there are any conflicts between this section and any other provision of this Privacy Policy, the portion that is more protective of Personal Data shall control to the extent of such conflict. If you have any questions about this section or whether any of the following rights apply to you, please contact us at privacy@contrary.com.
You have the right to request certain information about our collection and use of your Personal Data over the past 12 months, including the:
You have the right to request that we delete the Personal Data that we have collected about you, subject to certain exceptions under the CCPA: for example, we may need to retain your Personal Data to provide you with the Services or services or complete a transaction or other action you have requested, or if deletion of your Personal Data involves disproportionate effort. If your deletion request is subject to one of these exceptions, we may deny your deletion request.
You have the right to request that we correct any inaccurate Personal Data we have collected about you. Under the CCPA, this right is subject to certain exceptions: for example, if we decide, based on the totality of circumstances related to your Personal Data, that such data is correct. If your correction request is subject to one of these exceptions, we may deny your request.
To exercise the rights described above, you must send us a request that (1) provides sufficient information to allow us to verify that you are either the person about whom we have collected Personal Data or are an agent authorized by that person, and (2) describes your request in sufficient detail to allow us to understand, evaluate and respond to it. Each request that meets both of these criteria will be considered a “Valid Request.” We may not respond to requests that do not meet these criteria. We will only use Personal Data provided in a Valid Request to verify your identity and complete your request. You may submit a Valid Request by emailing us at privacy@contrary.com.
We will work to respond to your Valid Request within 45 days of receipt. We will not charge you a fee for making a Valid Request unless your Valid Request(s) is excessive, repetitive or manifestly unfounded. If we determine that your Valid Request warrants a fee, we will notify you of the fee and explain that decision before completing your request.
You may also authorize an agent (an “Authorized Agent”) to exercise your rights on your behalf. To do this, you must provide your Authorized Agent with written permission to exercise your rights on your behalf, and we may request a copy of this written permission from your Authorized Agent when they make a request on your behalf.
We will not “sell” your Personal Data, as that term is defined in the CCPA, and have not done so over the last 12 months. We also do not sell the Personal Data of minors under 16 years of age.
Under the CCPA, California residents have certain rights when a business “shares” Personal Data with third parties for purposes of cross-contextual behavioral advertising. We will not share your Personal Data for cross-contextual behavioral advertising, and have not done so over the last 12 months. To our knowledge, we do not share the Personal Data of minors under 16 years of age for purposes of cross-contextual behavioral advertising.
We will not deny you access to our Services or provide you a lower quality of services if you exercise your rights under the CCPA. If you have any questions about this section or whether any of the above rights apply to you, please contact us at privacy@contrary.com.
California residents are entitled to contact us to prevent disclosure of Personal Data to third parties for such third parties’ direct marketing purposes, under California Civil Code Sections 1798.83-1798.84. If you would like to submit such a request, please contact us at privacy@contrary.com.
If you are a resident of Nevada, you have the right to opt-out of the sale of certain Personal Data to third parties who intend to license or sell that Personal Data. If you are a Nevada Resident, you can exercise this right by contacting us at privacy@contrary.com with the subject line “Nevada Do Not Sell Request” and providing us with your name. Please note that we do not currently sell your Personal Data as sales are defined in Nevada Revised Statutes Chapter 603A.
The Services are hosted and operated in the United States (“U.S.”) by us and through our service providers, and if you do not reside in the U.S., laws in the U.S. may differ from the laws where you reside. If you are a resident of the European Union (“EU”), United Kingdom, Lichtenstein, Norway, or Iceland, you may have additional rights under the EU or UK General Data Protection Regulation (collectively, the “GDPR”) with respect to your Personal Data, as outlined below. By using the Services, you acknowledge that any Personal Data about you, regardless of whether provided by you or obtained from a third party, is being provided to us in the U.S. and will be hosted on U.S. servers, and you authorize us to transfer, store and process your information to and in the U.S., and possibly other countries. You hereby consent to the transfer of your data to the U.S. pursuant to: (i) a data processing agreement incorporating standard data protection clauses promulgated by the European Commission, (ii) binding corporate rules for data protection that align with the GDPR’s requirements, or (iii) adherence to an industry- or technology-specific approved code of conduct blessed by the European Commission.
For this section, we use the terms “Personal Data” and “processing” as they are defined in the GDPR, but “Personal Data” generally means information that can be used to individually identify a person, and “processing” generally covers actions that can be performed in connection with data such as collection, use, storage and disclosure. We will be the controller of your Personal Data processed in connection with your use of the Services.
If there are any conflicts between this section and any other provision of this Privacy Policy, the policy or portion that is more protective of Personal Data shall control to the extent of such conflict. If you have any questions about this section or whether any of the following applies to you, please contact us at privacy@contrary.com.
The “Categories of Personal Data We Collect” subsection of this Privacy Policy above details the Personal Data that we collect from you, and “How We Share Your Personal Data” details how we may use or disclose your Personal Data.
We will only process your Personal Data if we have a lawful basis for doing so. Lawful bases for processing include consent, contractual necessity and our “legitimate interests” or the legitimate interest of others, as further described below.
You have certain rights with respect to your Personal Data, including those set forth below.
For more information about these rights, or to submit a request, please contact us at privacy@contrary.com.
Please note that in some circumstances, we may not be able to fully comply with your request, such as if it is frivolous or extremely impractical, if it jeopardizes the rights of others, or if it is not required by law, but in those circumstances, we will still respond to notify you of such a decision. In some cases, we may also need you to provide us with additional information, which may include Personal Data, if necessary to verify your identity and the nature of your request.
We’re constantly trying to improve our Services, so we may need to change this Privacy Policy from time to time, but we will alert you to any such changes by placing a notice on our website, by sending you an email and/or by some other means. Please note that if you’ve opted not to receive legal notice emails from us (or you haven’t provided us with your email address), those legal notices will still govern your use of the Services, and you are still responsible for reading and understanding them. If you use the Services after any changes to the Privacy Policy have been posted, that means you agree to all of the changes. Use of information we collect is subject to the Privacy Policy in effect at the time such information is collected.
If you have any questions or comments about this Privacy Policy, the ways in which we collect and use your Personal Data, or your choices and rights regarding such collection and use, please do not hesitate to contact us at: privacy@contrary.com.
By navigating this website you agree to our privacy policy.