Meet the rising stars of equity research, up-and-comers making calls on everything from the next big electric car maker to the return of live events

  • Meet Insider’s lineup of up-and-coming talent in the world of equity research. 
  • We selected 19 young analysts 35 and under covering a wide range of sectors from gaming to natural gas.
  • The group hails from top Wall Street firms including Bank of America, JPMorgan, and Morgan Stanley.

The stock market today looks far different than it did during the depths of March 2020, when investors were coming to terms with the economic wreckage the pandemic would cause, and dramatic market plunges triggered so-called circuit breakers for the first time in years. 

This week, the S&P 500 surged to an all-time high, up 46% from a year ago. Executives are growing more optimistic about the US economy’s direction as vaccines roll out. And so far this earnings season, large-cap public companies have broadly turned in strong results and guidance, Bank of America Securities strategists told clients on Monday.   

Yet under the hood, whole sectors are in flux. 

It remains to be seen how industries like restaurants, travel, and some retailers will come out of the pandemic, and the prospect of inflation in the US is starting to dominate earnings calls between management and analysts. 

Suffice to say, this is a hectic period for analysts tracking companies’ every move against a volatile macroeconomic backdrop. To identify standout analysts and highlight their work in a crowded field, Insider has compiled a list of rising stars in the industry. 

To qualify for the list, analysts had to be 35 years old or younger as of April 30, based in the US, work in sell-side equity research at a Wall Street firm, and stand out from peers through their work. Insider editors selected the finalists from nominations submitted by colleagues, bosses, and investors. 

Here is Insider’s list of the top up-and-coming stars of equity research on Wall Street:

Aga Zmigrodzka, 32, UBS

Gas distribution and midstream

When Aga Zmigrodzka was in college in 2007, her dad gave her a chunk of money solely so she could learn how to invest it.

She was enjoying the returns she was generating until the global financial crisis happened. It prompted Zmigrodzka to want to know about what was happening in the financial world on a deeper level. 

So she started researching. 

“That was my first realization that if you invest in the stock market, it’s not just about your fundamental analysis,” she said. “It’s about the whole picture.”

More than a decade later, Zmigrodzka is among the world’s most successful young equity researchers. 

A native of Poland, where she first started her career at UBS, she’s now a director of equity research at the bank based in New York. She is the bank’s lead gas-utilities analyst. UBS’ natural-gas team was ranked the top research team in the oil and gas sector by Institutional Investor last year. 

Zmigrodzka said she is most proud of her analysis of macro factors, such as this year’s winter storms in Texas. She credits her curiosity and willingness to collaborate for her career success.

Outside of work, Zmigrodzka enjoys traveling and taking road trips. She said she doesn’t have a favorite place to visit and likes to constantly see new places — a trait perhaps derived from the same curiosity that has helped her as a researcher.

“As a kid, I used to travel every year throughout Europe, and we did a trip to a different country every summer,” she said, adding that she tries to travel to different places with her own children now.

Aileen Smith, 28, Bank of America

Automotives

If you know Aileen Smith’s family, you’re probably not surprised to see her on this list. 

Her sister is an Olympic-medal-winning swimmer. One of her brothers is a software engineer at SpaceX. The other is in flight school in the US Navy.

“To use an autos term here, very high-octane family,” she said. “I have a lot of drive and I’ll call it tunnel vision and a get-it-done attitude when it comes to setting goals for myself.” 

Smith, herself a record-setting swimmer during her time at Columbia University and the oldest sibling in her family, has relied on this drive to propel her to an impressive career start as an automotive-industry equity researcher at one of the world’s biggest investment banks.

While at Columbia, Smith interned at Bank of America and started there full-time after graduating. She’s since risen the ranks from analyst to associate to now vice president of equity research on the bank’s automotive team. 

She said one of her proudest moments so far has been her role in helping to launch Bank of America’s coverage of rental-car firms.

“Obviously one of the dynamics that happened in COVID last year is the travel industry and the restaurant industry was really, really volatile and is very interesting at the moment,” Smith said. “So that lit a fire for me to get up and running on this stuff, so we initiated coverage on Avis Budget earlier this year.

Smith issued a buy rating on Avis Budget in January, and since then its share price has doubled. 

Smith said she’s also proud of her work as a mentor to younger colleagues at Bank of America.

Beyond work, Smith says she is a devoted fan of the Marvel franchise. When asked for her favorite character in the franchise, she paused, then made the type of high-conviction call you’d expect from an equity researcher.

“Thor. It’s like choosing between your children because they’re all great, but definitely the third Thor movie sealed the deal.”

Ben Chaiken, 32, Credit Suisse

Gaming, lodging, and leisure

It is not a coincidence that one of the best gaming, lodging, and leisure analysts around is also an avid skier, rock climber, and surfer. 

Ben Chaiken lives and breathes the sector he covers by combining his real-life experiences with an acute intellectual rigor. 

After completing a post-college investment-banking rotational program, Chaiken found equity research to be the most enjoyable and intellectually stimulating way to continue learning. 

While he says he fell into the sector by coincidence, the outdoorsman has a knack for distilling unique insights into his qualitative and quantitative research. Whether it’s using a sports-betting operator’s mobile app, visiting a theme park, or skiing down the slopes of a resort, Chaiken tries to test the products as much as possible. 

“Our investment decision is not based on our anecdotal experience,” he said, “but having a deeper understanding of the product helps us make a more informed investment decision.”

To stand apart in a competitive field, Chaiken tries to look through the noise in order to offer clients differentiated stock views. For example, he gave Vail Resorts, a mountain, lodging, and real-estate operation, an outperform rating in the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“Our view was that the business was going to be more resilient than expected, in part driven by the local drive to skiers and also a lack of other optionality during COVID,” he said. “The inability to fly and travel was going to insulate the core business, and that was really the moving parts that are going to drive that core growth above expectations.”

A cultivated industry network was also invaluable in informing Chaiken’s differentiated view going into the pandemic. 

“As the ski season was getting started, I was hearing just from talking to my industry network that season-pass sales were stronger than expected,” he said. “They turned out to be true, and that’s one of the things that helps insulate the business, which was this strong network of prepaid passes versus relying on single-day transactions.”

Edison Yu, 31, Deutsche Bank

Automotives and auto technology

Deutsche Bank

Edison Yu’s passion for the markets began when he was in college at New York University, but he knew then that the world of mergers and acquisitions and investment banking wasn’t for him. That’s why Yu told Insider he’s since found a home in equity research at Deutsche Bank, where he leads the bank’s coverage of Chinese electric-vehicle and autonomous-driving companies.

 “You have something about the markets, how dynamic they are, how they can fluctuate — it lures people and attracts people. And so to be able to just have your foot in the door on that and then to do the more deep dive, maybe the more cerebral aspects of the job — it’s a good balance,” Yu told Insider. 

Yu began his career covering tech companies at Evercore ISI and has also since worked at the Hong Kong-based investment bank CLSA and Guggenheim Partners. Since joining Deutsche Bank in 2018, he’s made a name for himself by initiating the bank’s equity research coverage of some of the biggest names in electric vehicles and autonomous technology — including NIO, XPeng, and Li Auto over the past year.

“I was fortunate enough to be covering auto, but more specifically having done a lot of work on EV itself, to be able to get on that wave and to be really at the front and center of that,” Yu said.

A key part of his job, Yu said, is balancing his coverage between the fundamental analysis associated with equity research and the macro environment, specifically the relationship between the US and China, that also shapes the auto market in China. 

“Especially in the last three or four years, the China piece of any story has gotten much more nuanced, for lack of better words. It’s the biggest EV market in the world, so by definition, one must be monitoring what’s going on. It makes the job very volatile sometimes, but I think we wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Yu said he makes a concerted effort to separate his work from his personal life on the weekends, and he said since the pandemic began he’s taken up an interest in wine and also enjoys playing piano — as well as the occasional Netflix show.

Emily Chieng, 29, Goldman Sachs

Metals and mining

Emily Chieng

Emily Chieng was still in college when she began gaining exposure to metals and mining, the sector she now covers as an equity-research analyst at Goldman Sachs in New York. 

As part of earning her degree at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, Chieng interned at one of the largest commodities firms in the world, BHP Billiton. While Chieng, 29, didn’t love working on-site, she found a passion for the industry.

In 2019, after five years working at Goldman in Australia and then New York, she began covering Canadian oil-sands companies and last year began covering North American metals and mining firms. 

While her early experience working inside the industry was helpful when first starting out, Chieng said that what’s been most helpful since is keeping a keen eye on macro developments as they relate to commodities.

“That global perspective has been what’s super helpful and understanding the supply-and-demand picture of different commodities and what makes things tick has been what I’ve found most interesting,” Chieng told Insider.

When Chieng first began covering Canadian oil-sands companies two years ago, she knew she wasn’t launching coverage of new firms or a new industry. 

Instead, she said, her goal was to “find something that I think was missing from the market.” To that end, she and her team built a supply-and-demand model for the entire sector, combining a bottom-up analysis of each mine in Canada and working with other teams at Goldman to bring in market-demand metrics.

“I think having that level of granularity was really helpful for clients who were specifically looking to play the Canadian oil-sands coverage because small tweaks in the supply-demand balance can make a big difference to pricing realizations for some of these products,” Chieng said. 

Chieng said the connections she’s made at Goldman have been invaluable throughout her career. She’s the chief operating officer of both the Asian Professionals Network and the Women’s Network for Global Investment Research in the Americas. In her free time, she’s taken up cooking during the pandemic and also enjoys working out, a hobby “that I’ve found New York incredible for.”

Evan Seigerman, 32, Credit Suisse

Biotech

Evan Seigerman

A Michigan native, Evan Seigerman has always found biotech and healthcare a fascinating subject to study. In high school, he considered becoming a physician, but in college, he chose to major in finance and accounting. 

After graduating from the University of Michigan, Seigerman got his start working for the life-sciences practice of the consulting firm Capgemini. 

After three years in consulting, Seigerman joined Deutsche Bank as a biotech-equity research analyst in 2013, covering rare-disease companies. In 2015, he transitioned to Barclays and worked under Geoff Meacham, who left to join Bank of America in late 2019 as a senior biotech and pharma analyst. 

“I’ve really learned a ton on his team,” he said. “From client services to how to think about the sector, to how to interact with corporates, and really just how to be the best biopharma analyst.”

In 2018, Seigerman joined Credit Suisse. In his role as a senior large-cap biotech analyst, he has not only dived into individual-company research but also stayed on top of the broader themes within the sector as a whole. That has helped him make some prescient and distinctive stock calls. 

In December 2019, he downgraded Gilead Sciences from neutral to underperform. He stuck with that rating even as the stock was rising as enthusiasm over the firm’s antiviral medication remdesivir skyrocketed in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

He knew that the sudden price surge was unsustainable, recalling that the stock shot to $84 in April last year before retracing to around $66 a share as of April 27.

“It’s calls like that that I’m proud of,” he said. “Even if I have an underperform rating on a stock, it is very important in ensuring that my clients, investors, and the corporates are respected and that the work I’m doing has the highest level of integrity.”

Joe Thome, 32, Cowen

Biotech

With a doctorate in microbiology and immunology from Columbia University, Joe Thome had “a late-stage transition” to finance, but his career in equity research blossomed quickly. 

He attributes his fast adjustment to two mentors: Eric Schmidt, a top biotech analyst at Cowen who went on to become the chief financial officer at Allogene Therapeutics, and Philip Nadeau, a senior biotech analyst at Cowen. 

“Working under them and their mentorship definitely helped propel me forward to make sure we’re thinking about the right thing and really learning about that space,” he said. 

Coming from a science background, Thome has the advantage of having grasped a lot of the knowledge that is applicable to the companies that he talks to every day. But he believes that a constant appetite for learning, a strong desire to dig deep into the science, and knowing how to work with a team have also been instrumental to his success. 

“I think what Cowen looks for in the next generation of leaders is someone that can not only do the work but takes charge of initiative on larger projects,” he said. “So learning how to use your peers, mentors, and colleagues in a way that is extremely productive is something that I think all equity analysts can do.”

Before joining Cowen, Thome already had a few high-profile academic publications on new scientific innovations. He continues to leverage this strength and recently issued a large report on gene therapy in order to help the broader investment community understand it as well as the trials and successes associated with the technology. 

“It’s been really successful. We’ve gotten great feedback on that report, and it’s really highly read,” he said, adding that the team has also organized a conference to educate investors and clients about the rapid development in the area. 

Judah Sokel, 35, JPMorgan

Business and information services

Judah Sokel’s road to equity research included a pit stop as an accountant.

“I would love to pretend I was born invested in the stock market, but I didn’t think about Wall Street until I got to business school,” he told Insider. He said that being an analyst has an education component that he was well-suited for, given his background.

“On the sell side, we’re telling a story and we’re here to educate clients,” he said. “We may not always have the perfect estimate, but it’s our job to explain to clients what a company does, how it makes money, its competitive advantages, and what’s going on in the market.”

Sokel earned an accounting degree from Touro College in New York and worked for consultants PwC and McGladrey, now RSM US, before going back to school for an MBA at NYU Stern School of Business. He graduated in 2014 and has been in JPMorgan’s equity-research division covering business and information services ever since. 

Analysts are often told to specialize and differentiate themselves by becoming experts in niche areas of their sectors. But Sokel says he likes the business and information services sector because he can succeed by being more of a generalist. His coverage list includes the commercial-landscape company BrightView, the pest-control company Terminix, and Moody’s Investors Service.

“From food services at a stadium or how many people watch a TV show, it couldn’t be a more wide range in terms of the markets and industries that are discussed,” he said. “This keeps it interesting because almost anything can be touched by the companies we cover. I like to call myself a generalist on the sell side.” 

Outside of work, Sokel is an avid sports enthusiast who enjoys playing and watching most games — but his favorite teams are the New York Giants and the New York Knicks.

Kristen Owen, 34, Oppenheimer

Agriculture technology

Kristen Owen didn’t start her career in equity research right away.

After graduating from Kent State University in Ohio, she worked at a bank branch in Akron as a financial consultant before deciding to get her MBA at American University.

She then worked in wealth management in Washington, DC, for a year, an experience that has helped her stay focused on the impact her equity research has. 

“I think it provided me with a little bit more context to understand that the research I do — my clients are mutual-fund managers or hedge-fund managers — but ultimately the people who matter in that theme are our parents, our grandparents,” Owen said. 

“Your research actually has an impact on individuals,” she added. “So I think just having that little bit of that perspective gives me great pride in what I do.”

Owen then moved to Philadelphia in 2013 to work for Janney Montgomery Scott in equity research before moving to New York in 2015 to work for Oppenheimer, where she has risen through the ranks.

Owen said her proudest accomplishment so far has been starting coverage of the agricultural-technology sector at Oppenheimer.

She attributes her interest in the agriculture industry to her mom’s career in the restaurant industry and her fandom of the food writer Anthony Bourdain growing up.

Outside of work, Owen enjoys learning about New York City history and volunteers for The Trust for Public Land helping to develop new parks in the city.

Kyle Voigt, 32, Keefe, Bruyette & Woods

Global market structure, electronic brokerage, and wealth management

Keefe, Bruyette & Woods

When GameStop’s stock and its army of devotees became the face of market mania gripping retail investors in January, Kyle Voigt’s days as an analyst covering global market structure and electronic-brokerage sectors were busy. 

“For the first time ever, I felt like people really cared about the market infrastructure that was underpinning the US cash-equity market,” Voigt, a managing director at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, the boutique investment-banking firm owned by Stifel, told Insider.

But he’s also seen days that made the meme-stock mania look like a sleepy trading session. 

“There have been times when I’ve had far, far more active inbound calls that were just nonstop,” Voigt said. “A lot of those had to do with regulation that sometimes comes up out of the blue, and M&A.” 

All in a day’s work. Voigt joined KBW, known for its specialization in financial-services investment banking and research, in 2012 from the listings department at NYSE Euronext, where he started his career. 

Now he feels that focusing on a smaller set of names in his coverage at a specialist firm — “going a level deeper” — separates his research from the pack. 

“That’s half the job,” Voigt said. “The other half of the job is taking the data and analytics, putting that into something that’s readable and understandable and actually has a solid conclusion, which is also not the easiest thing to do, and also conveying that to our clients.” 

Lauren Schenk, 31, Morgan Stanley

Small- and mid-cap internet companies

Lauren Schenk has spent her entire career with Morgan Stanley in equity research. Schenk, who started as a summer intern in 2011, joined full-time in 2012 to cover retail companies after graduating from Boston College. 

“I knew I wanted to be client-facing at a preeminent firm. I also wanted a role that would help me to further develop both my quantitative and qualitative skills,” Schenk told Insider. “And I think that’s one of the aspects of equity research that I enjoy the most, the balance of those two things.” 

Schenk, an executive director, now heads up the firm’s small- and mid-cap internet-stock coverage, primarily tracking e-commerce companies like Bumble, Farfetch, and Poshmark. 

“Being in touch with how brand names and product trends are evolving, how consumer spending patterns are changing — that has always been really fascinating to me,” she said.

Today she’s meshed expertise in covering traditional retailers with faster-growing e-commerce businesses, and early on she worked on developing industry models around the online-dating industry at the firm. 

Schenk first worked under a more senior research analyst at Morgan Stanley, Kimberly Greenberger, who she said has been a “tremendous mentor” through the years.

“She not only was my manager, but she was also really supportive of my career development internally: the promotion process, the coverage process,” Schenk said. “My work gave her the confidence to be able to support me in that way. But I always asked for more, raised my hand, and was really eager to not stay still for too long.” 

Michael Ng, 34, Goldman Sachs

Video Games, select internet, toys, and movie theaters

Goldman Sachs

Michael Ng got his start in the industry when BMO Capital Markets “decided to take a bet” on him when he applied for an equity-research position despite his work experience being in mortgage securitization and consulting out of college. 

At BMO, Ng covered packaged foods and agriculture before moving to Goldman Sachs in 2013. Ng found success when the bank had an opening on its technology, media, and telecom equity-research team, where he covered markets like movie theaters and toys. 

Since then, Ng’s expanded his initial coverage of media and entertainment companies to include stocks like the gaming companies Activision Blizzard and Zynga. 

“When I started out in equity research, I was very sector agnostic. I was just happy to learn about the markets, build a foundation of analytics, really develop my understanding of businesses overall,” Ng said.

Ng said he’s been able to leverage his experience covering consumer goods to inform his time spent covering some of the market’s most visible video-game stocks. He’s able to track consumer sentiment, like gauging the response to a product release, by keeping tabs on sites like Twitter and Reddit. 

“I remember when I started out my career covering toys, I used to spend an hour or two every week walking up and down the aisles of Toys R Us, quite literally looking at the toys that were on the shelves. Looking at some of these social-media platforms has been a really helpful substitute for those in-person channel checks,” Ng said.

In his free time, Ng said he makes an effort to take time off from work and get out of his home base of New York City. “That’s the beauty of living in a place like New York state. You can go a few hours in any direction and get to the beach or get to the mountains or anything really.”

Paul Golding, 30, Macquarie

Consumer lifestyle and payments

Like others on this list, Paul Golding, who now covers consumer lifestyle and payments companies for Macquarie, has an invaluable connection to the industries he covers. He began his career on the other side of the aisle, in what he calls “the operating side of finance” doing corporate financial planning and analysis at Disney.

“From a broader skill-set perspective, it was valuable in helping me understand what’s happening on the other side of the phone,” Golding told Insider. He’s since been able to use his understanding of how corporations prepare budget forecasts and present them through investor relations to communicate with executives at the companies he covers. 

Since joining Macquarie in 2016, Golding has distinguished himself by taking chances on as-of-yet-little-known stocks. 

“I thought if I can put together a pitch for me covering something that maybe isn’t really on people’s radar yet, I could make a splash and get my name out there as a lead on something,” Golding said. One company he began covering early on was Roku. In 2018, Golding initiated coverage of the streaming platform with an outperform rating.

With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Golding saw another opportunity to drive his equities coverage forward by pivoting to include e-commerce and payments in his coverage universe. 

“Just because a traditional leisure analyst doesn’t necessarily cover PayPal, it doesn’t mean that PayPal doesn’t have a role in so much of what’s happening in the sector. These are all things that are interwoven,” Golding said. 

 As a result, his coverage at Macquarie has now become a blend of “travel and lifestyle, e-commerce, digital commerce, online stores and digital payments,” he said.

In his free time, Golding participates in what the philanthropic arm of Macquarie calls a “pro bono marathon” that matches employees with nonprofit organizations to work through business problems and provide budgeting and financial advice. 

Paul Matteis, 31, Stifel

Biotech

Stifel

Paul Matteis did not plan for a career in finance. In college, he majored in psychology and premed out of his passion for biology and chemistry. After graduation, he got his start doing neurology research in a lab at Harvard Medical School. 

But working in a lab turned out to be an unsuitable profession for an extrovert like Matteis.

While trying to figure out how to pivot, he learned from friends and contacts on Wall Street about equity research, a job that involved not only analyzing biotech companies and drugs and making predictions about them but also talking to people.

In 2012, he joined Leerink Partners as a junior associate and worked his way up to become an analyst and managing director before leaving for Stifel in 2018. 

 “When I became an analyst, I started covering more of the emerging companies in biotech that were focused on neurology, areas like depression and Alzheimer’s,” he said. “It was through that area that I was able to leverage the neurology background I had from working in the lab and from school.”

But having a background in science and medicine is not enough, Matteis said analysts need to be specialized in order to add value in an important and widely-covered space such as biotech.

Recently, Matteis expanded his in-depth research coverage by hosting a two-day conference where he moderated 30-minute panels with almost 40 different companies in the neurobiology space. Almost 300 investors attended the virtual panels. 

Outside of work, Matteis enjoys skiing and running. He is also involved in the President’s Advisory Council at his alma mater Skidmore College.

Rajat Gupta, 33, JPMorgan

Automotive

A mechanical engineer by training, Rajat Gupta said he’s always had an interest in cars, how they work, and the parts and technologies that go in them. So when an opening to cover the automotive industry at JPMorgan arose in 2018, he jumped at the opportunity.

Previously, Gupta had spent nearly 10 years at the bank covering the electrical equipment and multi-industry and global communications-equipment industries.

“I got lucky because if there’s one industry that’ll be the most exciting in the next decade or so, it’s automotive,” he said in an interview. “People are now buying and selling cars online just from their home, so there’s a lot of stuff that’s changing in the industry across the supply chain, which will make it really exciting for the next five to 10 years.”

Today, as a vice president covering autos, auto parts, and auto dealers, Gupta is the lead analyst on auto dealerships and provides lead coverage for stocks like Carvana, CarMax, Lithia Motors, and Tesla. He’s also a senior associate on a team covering autos and auto-parts stocks — companies that manufacture vehicle equipment like air conditioners, power-steering systems, and airbags — with a combined market cap of $500 billion-plus.

Gupta said the pandemic has given him more opportunities to spend time with his 2-year-old son, and parenting during the past year has also inspired him to advocate for better childcare and support for parents of children with special needs. These issues fit into broader conversations about mental health in the workplace, he said.

“Today’s lifestyle has a greater demand on mental energy that’s different than the previous generation,” he said. “It was always an issue before COVID, but now it’s even more upfront — which in a way is good because it’s raised more awareness around the issue.”

Gupta also likes to watch and play cricket and to travel. He graduated from the India Institute of Technology Bombay in 2009.

Robert Majek, 31, Raymond James

Software, infrastructure

Robert Majek always knew he wanted to do sell-side equity research, but he became inspired to cover IT infrastructure and software after reading the venture capitalist and entrepreneur Marc Andreessen’s 2011 Wall Street Journal opinion piece about how new technologies are here to stay.

“I’ve differentiated myself by developing really specialized IT and software product knowledge, which helps me do invaluable, deep-dive research as opposed to just earnings notes,” he said in an interview. 

In his less than four years at Raymond James, where he joined as a senior research associate in 2017, he’s risen through the ranks to become the firm’s youngest lead analyst at the end of 2020. He has 15 stocks under his primary coverage, including Oracle, Microsoft, and Atlassian.

“I enjoy doing that deep, iterative research process by developing and talking to industry contacts and digging into projects,” Majek said. “It takes a lot of time to do that, but I’ve developed a knack for doing it well.”

Before joining Raymond James, he spent four years as an associate analyst at CJS Securities. Before that, he was an associate at Condor Capital Wealth Management. Majek graduated from Rutgers University in 2012 with an economics degree.

Outside of his day job, Majek volunteers as a mentor for American Corporate Partners, a nonprofit organization that helps returning veterans find a career in the civilian workforce. He said this work became a passion for him after his brother joined the Air Force four years ago and he realized how tough it can be for service members to readjust to civilian life. 

Majek is also an avid skier, golfer, and traveler, and he hopes to soon visit his grandmother in Poland.

Stephen Glagola, 32, Cowen

Media and entertainment

In January 2020, two months before the World Health Organization would declare a pandemic and in-person events would grind to a halt, Cowen launched coverage of Live Nation. 

“I was very bullish when I initiated,” Stephen Glagola, a vice president at Cowen, told Insider. “Two weeks later, I hear in mid-February that there’s this coronavirus in China, and then in Europe. The live-events business got hit square in the nose. There was no live-event business come March.”

That was an obstacle for Glagola as an emerging analyst, who joined Cowen in 2013 to cover media and entertainment and now leads coverage of Live Nation and DraftKings. He remains bullish on the name, which he expects will benefit from the return to in-person entertainment and has since rallied back to pre-pandemic levels. (The stock traded as low as $21 apiece in March 2020 and traded at about $83 on Monday). 

Glagola joined the firm from Barclays, where he was an equity-research associate covering retail and footwear companies. At Cowen he started working closely with Doug Creutz, a managing director and senior research analyst who Glagola counts as an early mentor. 

“What I learned from Doug was trying to be as differentiated as possible,” he said. “This is a people business, too. I can’t stress that enough.”

Glagola had an early interest in finance, inspired by the likes of Warren Buffett and Benjamin Graham, and around his sophomore year of college started thinking more seriously about what field he wanted to pursue. He was drawn to the idea of becoming an analyst who could constantly learn new things through his work. 

“The market’s very exciting to me. It’s a three-dimensional puzzle. The whole world is changing constantly. The businesses and stocks we cover are changing constantly, and nothing is stable.”

Taylor McGinnis, 28, UBS

Software

As a lacrosse player at Lafayette College in Pennsylvania, Taylor McGinnis would go to the practice facility during the middle of the day to get extra sessions in.

“I was never the person that was naturally awesome on the field with little practice,” McGinnis said. “That’s something I learned through sports. … I was always the person that kept putting in the extra time and eventually earned my spot in the starting lineup.”

The work ethic she learned through the sport eventually leaked into how she approached her schoolwork, she said, and has led to the success she’s had in her career thus far.

She was hired by Deutsche Bank out of college, where she was a leading equity-research analyst on multiple software stocks, including Microsoft. Before moving to UBS this year, where she also covers mid-cap software stocks, she coheaded Deutsche Bank’s software research team.

McGinnis said her success is due in part to going out and speaking with people with firsthand knowledge of the industry she covers. 

She also cited her orientation to detail — and so do her colleagues. Multiple submissions nominating McGinnis for this list said she has the most detailed model for Microsoft on Wall Street. 

McGinnis said the best call in her career was on the software firm Anaplan, when she was among the first to be bullish on the stock. Since its IPO in October 2018, it’s up 137%.

“That was one I felt really good about because at the time, it seemed to me like the stock was reaching a bottom while other people were increasingly becoming more cautious. I was like, ‘Yeah, I’m as cautious as you near-term and understand that, but I think that downside risk is limited, and when you look ahead, this isn’t a name you’re going to want to miss once things start normalizing,'” she said. “Then over time, I saw many people who had previously downgraded the stock, upgrade it after the stock had already materially appreciated.”

Tyler Radke, 29, Citi

Software

Going to college in San Francisco in the late 2000s inspired Tyler Radke’s passion for software and technology.

“This was the middle of the recession in 2009, and I was in the heart of tech innovation,” he told Insider. Many of his close friends, along with his wife, worked in tech, which gave him a way in to the sector and a strong network early on. 

After graduating from the University of San Francisco a year early in 2012, where he majored in business, Radke joined Lazard Capital Markets as an equity research intern and later associate covering semiconductors before moving to MKM Partners in 2013 to cover enterprise software. He jumped to Citi as a senior associate in 2014 and has spent the past seven years climbing the ranks of the software-equity research team. 

At the beginning of the year, he became a director and senior equity-research analyst covering software at Citi, where he’s the lead analyst on 31 stocks, including Oracle, Microsoft, and Palantir.

“I like equity research because I get to interact with some of the smartest people in the world and learn from them new ways to look at financial markets, tech companies, and technologies,” Radke said. He added that no two days are the same at his job and that the relationships he’s been able to build in the sector have been incredibly rewarding. 

Since his day job is largely spent in front of computer screens to understand the software that goes into the machines, Radke says that he tries to unplug as much as possible when he’s not at work. He’s big on winter sports, like skiing, as well as other outdoor activities, and he said he’s looking forward to traveling and eating at restaurants when it’s safe to do so again.

Radke married his wife last year in the midst of the pandemic, and the two had to put their honeymoon — an African safari — on hold. He says he hopes they’ll be able to go later this year.


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