Economics & Strategy – Equity Derivatives: Second

Davide Silvestrini and his J.P. Morgan Cazenove crew of five rise one rung to No. 2. With four members working out of London and one newly based in New York, the strategists earn acclaim for being “consistently unbiased,” in the words of one investor, who insists their forecasts are “the best of all the analysts I track.” The team is “shifting from more of a short volatility bias to a more neutral bias and focusing increasingly on relative-value trades,” Silvestrini says. That’s because the risk premiums on equity derivatives have largely diminished from a year ago, when they were “elevated and a lot more attractive, so most of our strategies aimed to monetize them,” he adds. — Carolyn Koo