Research Overview
The essential goal of Weeden & Co.’s growing research platform is to service a smaller list of clients extremely well and to become an integral extension of the “in-house” investment process of those clients. We would hope that our work would ultimately become thought of as “buy side” research in terms of its quality and its usefulness in helping clients craft their overall portfolio strategy. We believe the number of impact analysts who bring significant value to the research process has diminished. And it is with this in mind that we are building an analyst team staffed with research professionals with long term, established track records.
Our senior analysts average over 8 years each of industry experience and over 15 years each of a combination of sell side, consulting and buy side experience. As a major part of our research offering, we are also providing client access to senior management of many of the companies in our formal coverage universe. In keeping with our goal of becoming a significant research resource to a tight list of clients, our corporate access program will normally be in the form of small venues, “one-on-ones,” investor field trips and bus tours.
With the addition of two highly-ranked Energy analysts, Geoff Kieburtz and Ellen K. Hannan, joined with veteran analyst, Charley Maxwell, and three associate analysts, Weeden has in place the nucleus of an exceptional energy research department. In 2009, Weeden introduced a new monthly publication, Energy Outlook, which provides a summary forum of our views of the macro energy environment, our current commodity price forecasts and most compelling investment ideas.
Our plan is to continue to add research talent that is aligned strategically with our existing effort, but which is also based on the direction and the needs expressed to us by clients. In January of 2010, Weeden hired Chris Harvey as Senior Investment Strategist with the idea of integrating equity, fixed income and quantitative analysis to help clients shape their investment process and to provide portfolio ideas.
We believe our Investment Strategy analysis will compliment the work produced by Steve Goldman, Weeden’s Senior Market Strategist. Steve’s weekly report, Systematic Views, utilizes proprietary sentiment indicators, interest rate models, valuation metrics, and market internal and momentum indicators to gauge the overall structure of the market.
In March of 2010, we hired Amy Noblin as Senior Retail Analyst, and Jessica Swan as Associate Analyst covering Softline Retail. Amy’s experience fits the profile of the type of analyst that Weeden hopes to continue to attract - she was an industry buyer for 5 years and a sell side analyst for 12 years at DLJ, Banc of America Securities, and most recently at Pali Capital.
Weeden’s newly formed fixed income research division offers credit research expertise reaching across a broad spectrum of global fixed income and equity-linked products such as high yield, distressed, convertibles, preferred stocks, municipals and structured products. This effort is being led by senior fixed income analyst, Jin Ho, an investment professional with over 20 years of experience, and senior desk analyst, Robert Dia, who joined Weeden after spending 10 years at Merrill Lynch as a credit analyst.
Rounding out our product offering are Welling@Weeden and The Leuthold Group. Kate Welling, for many years Barron’s writer and editor, created Welling@Weeden over a decade ago to provide Weeden clients with focused, independent and ahead-of-the pack research, opinion and analysis. The Leuthold Group is an affiliated research product offered by Weeden & Co. Founded in 1981, The Leuthold Group offers independent, top-down, quantitative and contrarian Institutional research. Led by Steve Leuthold, the research process is conducted by a team of 7 analysts, and includes technical and quant analysis, broad sector and industry group analysis, earnings momentum, supply/demand dynamics, and valuation studies.
Weeden plans to expand its research effort to meet the demands of its client base and we hope to add new research verticals over the coming year. We welcome ideas from clients as to areas of special interest, project work, and custom research both on the quantitative and qualitative side.