Marco Dion & team, J.P. Morgan Cazenove

After a year atop the roster, J.P. Morgan Cazenove’s trio with Marco Dion at the helm returns to second place. The London-based analysts provide “extremely thought-provoking, fundamental quant research,” one buy-sider reports, while another is impressed that the team members can “present complex quant concepts in an investor-friendly manner.” The crew’s main concern at the moment is linked to the expectation among many investors (and analysts) of a rally in value during the second half of the year. “A lot of our clients are short value — and aggressively so, since most quant managers now use dynamic factor rotation models to define their factor weights,” he explains. “We are a little worried that the rally in value could be underestimated, surprising managers, and that the en masse exit of value could hurt performances.”