The 2013 All-America Research Team: Portfolio Strategy, No. 2: Michael Goldstein

Empirical Research Partners’ Michael Goldstein, who repeats in second place — and holds on to the No. 2 spot in Quantitative Research — boasts a skill set that many on the buy side find appealing. “One reason he’s my top pick for both portfolio and quant strategy is the wonderful way he blends his talents,” reports one admirer. “They feed on each other.” Goldstein believes that as a recovery in the housing industry and loan demand takes hold, stocks of banks, securities firms and insurers are becoming attractive, especially those with depressed price-earnings ratios. The strategist is advising investors to prefer financial stocks that are returning capital to shareholders in the form of dividend payouts and stock buybacks. He also believes the markets are retaining skepticism despite the economy’s being more than five years beyond the onset of the Great Recession. Companies benefiting are those “where managements are doing the same thing,” he explains, regardless of market fears and doubts. These include names in biotechnology and pharmaceuticals, he says, as well as aerospace companies, airlines, cable and satellite providers, hotels, oil services companies, paper products manufacturers, railroads and refiners. — Paul Sweeney