Will Danoff, the world\u2019s most prolific solo stock-picker who generated world-beating returns during a run of more than three decades atop the Fidelity Contrafund, is set to retire at year-end.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt has been the privilege of a lifetime to manage Contrafund for 35 years and help millions of Fidelity\u2019s clients invest wisely and retire comfortably,\u201d Danoff, 65, said in an emailed statement. He will remain with Fidelity Investments as an adviser.<\/p>\n
Danoff will hand the reins of Contrafund to Fidelity veterans Jason Weiner and Asher Anolic, who were appointed co-portfolio managers last year.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve learned a lot and have had fun working closely together for decades, and they have embraced the Contrafund investment approach, backed by the depth and breadth of Fidelity\u2019s global research team,\u201d Danoff said of his successors.<\/p>\n
His exit marks the end of an era for Boston-based Fidelity, which for years avoided publicly addressing the question of what would happen when he finally decided to step down. Danoff, who was mentored by storied Fidelity stock-picker Peter Lynch, joined Fidelity in 1986 and took over Contrafund in 1990 as sole manager.<\/p>\n
Since then, the fund has returned roughly 10,500 percent, more than double the S&P 500, and ended 2025 with $176 billion of assets, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.<\/p>\n
Until April, Danoff almost single-handedly managed more than $300 billion across strategies. Over the decades, he won the trust of clients and management teams of the companies in his tech-heavy portfolio, including Amazon.com Inc., Nvidia Corp. and Meta Platforms Inc., and counted Mark Zuckerberg as an occasional tennis partner.<\/p>\n
In 2016, Fidelity released an advertisement showing a man typing a letter to Danoff and enclosing a photograph of his son, saying he had invested in Contrafund to save for the child\u2019s college education. It was based on a real letter he had received.<\/p>\n
Nidhi Gupta and Matt Drukker, who co-manage other smaller funds overseen by Danoff, will take control when he steps down.<\/p>\n
Bart Grenier, head of asset management at Fidelity, praised Danoff, citing his resiliency in navigating \u201csome of the most complex and volatile market environments\u201d during his tenure.<\/p>\n
\u201cWill\u2019s impact on countless shareholders, clients and Fidelity is truly inspiring,\u201d Grenier said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Will Danoff, the world\u2019s most prolific solo stock-picker who generated world-beating returns during a run of more than…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":547555,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[239,21028,64,240696,240695,19860,2722,255,2274,240698,2437,4009,67,132,68,240697],"class_list":{"0":"post-547554","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-personal-finance","8":"tag-apple","9":"tag-berkshire-hathaway","10":"tag-business","11":"tag-contrafund","12":"tag-fidelity-contrafund","13":"tag-fidelity-investments","14":"tag-google","15":"tag-personal-finance","16":"tag-sp-500","17":"tag-standard-poors","18":"tag-stock-market","19":"tag-uber","20":"tag-united-states","21":"tag-unitedstates","22":"tag-us","23":"tag-will-danoff"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115968922226451612","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=547554"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547554\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/547555"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=547554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=547554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=547554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}