Fumihide Goto UBS The buy side says: “His knowledge of the end markets is the best on the Street.”

Fumihide Goto, 42, who repeats in first place, is applauded for “prophecies that turn out to be true,” as one buy-side enthusiast puts it. Specifically, the UBS analyst foresaw that demand for smartphones and tablet computers would outpace the appetites for TVs and other equipment, and in May upgraded from neutral to buy two suppliers of specialty capacitors and other gear for those markets: Tokyo’s Alps Electric Co., at ¥623, partly on its recent cost-­cutting restructuring program, and Murata Manufacturing Co. of Kyoto, as a bargain at ¥4,410. Through February 2011 the high-tech-parts makers’ shares bounded 75.4 percent, to ¥1,093, and 37.9 percent, to ¥6,080, respectively, while the sector inched up only 2.9 percent. Goto “favored Murata while other analysts said the stock was expensive, and he was right — he’s a good independent thinker,” observes one money manager. Another adds that “Goto’s knowledge of components and devices is the best, and his data on the industry and the economy are very useful.”

Polling and tabulation of data as well as reporting on the sector profiles were completed before the March 11 Tohoku earthquake.