Guilherme Paiva & team  Morgan Stanley

Morgan Stanley, unranked in this sector since 2004, finishes third under the direction of newcomer Guilherme Paiva, who joined the firm in November from Deutsche Bank Securities. Praised by one money manager for their “accurate short-term recommendations,” the three New York–based strategists added Brazil’s OGX Petróleo e Gás Participações to their model portfolio in June as irresistibly cheap, at R16.12.

By late July the oil company’s shares had climbed 15.3 percent, to R18.59. Since its inception last December, the model portfolio had slipped 2.4 percent but outperformed the MSCI emerging-markets Latin America index by 4.3 percentage points, through July, Paiva says.