< The 2015 All-America Research Team

Total appearances: 6

Analyst debut: 2009

At No. 3 for the third time since 2012 is Morgan Stanley researcher Adam Parker, whom one fund manager hails as “innovative, creative and simply excellent.” Parker, 46, takes a “quantamental” approach to building a portfolio, he says, tapping into some 1,000 names his firm has under coverage in the U.S. and combining screenings of overweighted stocks with his own proprietary quantitative models. He is generally constructive on domestic equities through next year, forecasting improvement in America’s economy in the second half of 2016 and deeming bottom-up earnings-per-share expectations “achievable.” While favoring the consumer discretionary, energy and financial services sectors, the analyst is advising investors to underweight consumer staples, industrials and materials stocks.  He also is circumspect on biotechnology companies and so-called rollups, wherein multiple small companies in a single market are acquired and merged to create one large operator — a popular gambit in health care industries. In addition, “areas where investors are overpaying for dividend yield,” such as tobacco and telecommunications, are to be avoided, Parker counsels, and particular risk is evident for “interest rate-sensitive names as the [Federal Reserve] moves toward lift-off.” Overall, however, “we won’t call the top of the cycle,” he says, “until economic factors deteriorate, corporate hubris grows or the credit cycle looks to materially weaken.”