Jasmine Lu & team
Morgan Stanley
First-place appearances: 1

Total appearances: 15

Team debut: 1997

Advancing one rung to reclaim second place after a year at No. 3 is Jasmine Lu’s six-member squad at Morgan Stanley. “Jasmine and her team have years of experience and have seen many technology cycles,” one supporter remarks. Lu reports that her group — whose members are stationed in Hong Kong, Seoul and Taipei — has a constructive view regarding light-emitting diode suppliers, Internet-based data transfer and routing optimization, and emerging-markets smartphone growth. To that end, she says, the researchers are recommending LED plays that focus on general lighting, server-related companies that are “well-positioned to ride on the wave of cloud acceleration” and smartphone component proxies that can leverage growth in non-China developing markets. However, they are more bearish on the prospects for both a recovery in the personal computer market and a smartphone supply chain that is “heavily geared to China’s domestic market, where pricing competition is intensifying,” notes Lu, who declines to discuss specific stock recommendations. This year she also guides the crew that earns first place for its coverage of Taiwan.