New Delhi, Feb. 20 -- The big bulls on D-Street have been treading the markets with caution since September. But their "followers"-retail investors-appear to be charting their own course.

Mint analysed recent portfolio changes by nine prominent investors, including Vijay Kedia, Madhusudan Kela and Dolly Khanna, as well as retail and institutional investor activity in those same stocks.

In the October-December quarter, retail or individual investors increased or held their ownership in 63% of the stocks where these superstar investors either decreased their stakes or their holdings dropped to below 1%, show data from markets platform Trendlyne. This marks a significant jump from around 53% in the September quarter.

This contrarian behav...