Yasuhiro Narita Nomura Securities Co. The buy side says: “He knows what drives stock prices, which is sensitivity to commodity prices.”

On top of the roster for a second consecutive year is 36-year-old Yasuhiro Narita. Investors appreciate the fact that the Nomura Securities Co. researcher “knows management at all the companies he covers,” as one buy-side supporter puts it. In June, Narita published “Trading Companies,” a report detailing how Japanese conglomerates were leveraging relationships with overseas partners to gain traction in emerging economies. The analyst’s winning stock picks include an April 2010 reiteration of his long-standing buy on Osaka-headquartered Itochu Corp., at ¥843, on favorable trends in raw steel prices and on the elevation of Masahiro ­Okafuji to Itochu’s president and chief executive officer. Narita expects the company, which he says is already strong in China-­related businesses, to “leverage its expertise” further and aggressively target consumer-­related businesses in that country: “We have high expectations for ­Okafuji’s marketing skills,” the analyst explains. The stock zipped to ¥914 in January but had retreated to ¥846 by the end of February; nonetheless, it outperformed the sector by 3.7 percentage points since Narita’s reiteration.

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