< The 2016 All-Europe Research Team
Khuram Chaudhry, Dubravko Lakos-Bujas & team
J.P. Morgan Cazenove
First-place appearances: 4
Total appearances: 13
Team debut: 1986
In second place is J.P. Morgan Cazenove’s troupe under the direction of Khuram Chaudhry and Dubravko Lakos-Bujas, which improves from No. 3. These five quantitative researchers are “very approachable and provide timely color on quant factor and fund performance,” observes one admiring client. The crew is recommending that investors “start rotating from expensive, crowded and macro-driven equity momentum plays toward value, both across and within sectors,” says New York–based Lakos-Bujas, 34. Pinpointing “the exact timing of this rotation,” however, will be difficult. In the most recent turn, he explains, central banks’ policies and related macroeconomic trends — such as a strengthening dollar, weakening commodities and emerging-markets assets and declining bond yields — “fueled one of the strongest momentum trades across equities since the early 1980s,” resulting in momentum strategies’ outperforming value models by 31 percent from mid-2013 through November 2015. Now, notes London-based co-captain Chaudhry, 39, value’s time may have come. “There are many factors that warrant such a rotation in this current cycle,” including the major underperformance of value investing versus both the market and other style groups since the beginning of 2015.