Fidelity Contrafund’s Will Danoff to Retire

Fidelity Contrafund FCNTX and Fidelity Advisor New Insights FNIAX will soon bid farewell to their star manager. Will Danoff says he will retire from running these funds at the end of 2026. Their Morningstar Medalist Ratings are Under Review.

A Measured Handoff at Fidelity Contrafund

At Fidelity Contrafund, current comanagers Asher Anolic and Jason Weiner will broaden their responsibilities and assume full control of the fund’s assets by year-end. Fidelity added Anolic and Weiner to the manager lineup in April 2025, at first giving them a small slice of the portfolio. Between then and November 2025—the latest portfolio disclosure—about 30% of assets were reallocated, largely through changes in position sizes rather than a wholesale reshaping of the holdings.

The pair brings a long-standing and effective partnership. Until 2025, Anolic and Weiner had managed Fidelity Growth Discovery FDSVX and Fidelity Advisor Equity Growth EPGAX (both large-growth funds that benchmarked themselves to the Russell 3000 Growth Index) since July 2017 and Fidelity Capital Appreciation FDCAX (benchmarked to the S&P 500) since October 2018.

The strategy has a phenomenal long-term record under Danoff, who has managed it as a US mutual fund since September 1990.

During his tenure, the fund’s no-load share class gained 14.2% annualized through Jan. 26, 2026, beating the 11.3% gain of the S&P 500 (its broad-market prospectus benchmark) and the 11.8% gain of the Russell 1000 Growth Index (the large-growth category index). Its total return exceeded nearly all surviving large-cap funds.

Even over the past five years—a particularly tough stretch for active managers trying to beat those indexes—the fund doubled in value, beating Russell 1000 Growth index-trackers, the S&P 500, and 90% of peers in the large-growth Morningstar Category.

The fund’s emphasis on large firms with diverse business lines and competitive advantages has helped it show some resilience relative to large-growth indexes in down markets. That includes 2020’s pandemic-driven bear market (when the fund dropped 29.4% and the growth index plunged 31.5%), calendar-year 2022 (when the fund lost 28.3% versus the index’s 29.1% decline), and the index’s bear market from Dec. 17, 2024, through April 8, 2025.

A Murkier Transition at Fidelity Advisor New Insights

Matthew Drukker and Nidhi Gupta will take over at Fidelity Advisor New Insights. Fidelity added Drukker to the manager lineup in April 2025, at first giving him a small slice of the portfolio. Gupta started on the fund in June 2020, and during most of her tenure, she has managed around 40% of its assets. Danoff most recently managed half the portfolio’s assets.

Drukker, a Fidelity veteran since 2007, brings deep experience as an analyst covering internet and communications giants such as Alphabet GOOGL, Meta Platforms META, and Netflix NFLX. He has also managed sector-focused strategies, and in 2024, he began running a 40% sleeve of the Fidelity VIP Contrafund (an insurance account also comanaged by Danoff). Yet, his ability as a diversified money manager remains largely untested. That is also true of Gupta. Though she joined the fund in 2020 and has since run a sizable 40% sleeve, her distinct influence and ability are difficult to pinpoint. Her holdings here often mirror Danoff’s, blurring the lines of individual contribution, and she had only a brief tenure as the solo portfolio manager of Fidelity Fund FFIDX.