James Covello  Goldman, Sachs & Co.

The buy side says: “What’s there to say? This guy knows what drives these stocks.”

For a third year running — and for the fifth time in eight years — James Covello of ­Goldman, Sachs & Co. takes the pole position. Clients say ­Covello, 38, “doesn’t let himself get whipsawed by day-to-day volatility” and is “always in the forefront of thinking in the group.” The analyst prompted investors to buy Varian ­Semiconductor Equipment Associates in January, at $36.97, dubbing the Gloucester, ­Massachusetts–based manufacturer of semiconductor processing equipment an attractive acquisition target. Sure enough, Applied Materials of Santa Clara, ­California, announced in May that it would buy Varian for $4.9 billion, or $63 a share; the deal is expected to close by the end of this year. Varian’s shares rocketed 65.8 percent, to $61.29, and trumped the ­Standard & Poor’s 500 semiconductor equipment index by 82.9 percentage points, through August.