Maneesh Deshpande,
Venu Krishna & team
Barclays
First-place appearances: 10

Total appearances: 22

Team debut: 1993

Maneesh Deshpande, Venu Krishna and their seven-member team at Barclays repeat at No. 2. One money manager lauds the strategists for their proprietary products. “They have created investible indexes and track them. So they not only provide you with a logical investment strategy, but you can benchmark their performance.” The crew is sanguine that potential tapering of the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing program will not lead to a significant equity sell-off or a spike in the Chicago Board Options Exchange Market Volatility Index, Deshpande says. Even so, the analysts recommend a modified hedging strategy “using limited downside trades such as [S&P 500] put spreads or VIX call spreads,” he notes. And although the S&P has delivered strong returns this year — it was up 14.5 percent through August — the squad is recommending convertibles as “attractive against the current macro backdrop as a vehicle for risk-controlled equity exposure,” Deshpande adds. “Valuations are reasonable, duration is low versus corporate debt, and yield is attractive at 3.5 percent,” he reports. “We also like the exposure that convertibles provide to the small- and midcap equities, since they have higher-than-usual gearing to a potential economic recovery.” — Paul Sweeney