Carter Braxton Worth Oppenheimer & Co.

Climbing one tier to second place is Oppenheimer & Co.’s Carter Braxton Worth. In late April, as BP shares were falling, in the wake of the oil-rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico, Worth stayed cautious. Not until early June, when the American depositary receipts had lost 48.2 percent their value and closed at $29.20, did he declare them cheap enough to buy, citing a slowdown in what had been its protracted and severe downturn, as well as its unusually heavy trading volume. The ADRs continued to slip, bottoming out at $27.02 about two weeks later, before starting to rise. By the end of August, shares of the London-based oil giant had rallied 19.3 percent, to $34.83, from the time Worth gave investors the green light. “Carter is the first technician to convince me that he was worth paying attention to,” declares one portfolio manager.