A few years ago he was a celebrated (and then forgotten) sell-side analyst for Merrill Lynch, but these days Cohen's performance on the buy-side is enough for recognition. The fund managed by Cohen, Royce Technology Value, was the best performer in its Morningstar category in 2002 and outpaced the S&P 500 by a wide margin.

Cohen's success continued this year. The Royce fund had a total return of 16.2 percent through the first four months of 2003, well ahead of both its peers and the S&P 500, according to Morningstar. And Cohen has done it without relying on obvious big names such as Amazon.com and Dell; instead, his fund only invests in companies with market values of less than $4 billion. Holdings at the end of the first quarter included FindWhat.com, NetZero, Register.com, Iomega, Cybersource, LendingTree, Verity, ManTech International and Artisan Components.

Before going into fund management, Cohen might have been best known as the guy replaced by Henry Blodget as Merrill Lynch's Internet analyst, reportedly because Cohen was viewed as too pessimistic on the sector. Of course, Cohen turned out to be right about the bubble-like nature of most dot-com stocks, but his accuracy probably shouldn't be that much of a surprise, given his credentials: Cohen was on Institutional Investor's All-America Research team from 1996 through 1998.

His previous work includes stints at Wit Soundview from 1999 to 2001, Merrill Lynch from 1998 to 1999, UBS from 1997 to 1998, and Smith Barney from 1993 to 1997. He received a bachelor's degree in economics from Connecticut College and an MBA from Columbia University.

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As a senior member of the investment management practice at executive search firm Russell Reynolds Associates, Brown spends much of her time finding personnel for investment banks and money managers to hire. And despite the financial industry's woes over the past three years, talent will always find its niche, Brown says.

"Good fund managers are always in demand," she recently told Wall $treet Week with FORTUNE. "In fact, this marketplace has given our clients an opportunity in some cases to upgrade, and to attract some talent that they might not have had the opportunity to attract otherwise."

Russell Reynolds and the Association for Investment Management Research sponsor a biannual survey of the pay in the financial industry. The most recent poll, released this week, shows that median pay on Wall Street fell to $148,000, down 22 percent from 2001 and down 10 percent from 1999.

"I think that to some degree the investor should take heart that the fund managers are feeling the same volatility in their compensation as the investor is feeling in their pocketbook," Brown said.

Brown has 14 years of experience as an executive recruiter, including the last seven years at Russell Reynolds. She was a Goldman Sachs analyst for three years before entering her current field. Brown received a bachelors degree in mathematics and economics from New York University, where she also received a masters degree in finance.

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Whyman's company doesn't pick individual stocks -- heck, its analysts aren't even allowed to own individual stocks. Instead, Precursor produces reports on technology industry trends and sell them to institutional clients who use the big picture data to identify promising markets.

This year should mark a turnaround for the tech sector, Whyman believes. Earlier this year, he predicted 3 percent to 5 percent growth in 2003 after a decline last year. "The big message is it's going from negative to positive," Whyman said in an interview published in Barron's in February. "And tech is not only returning to growth, but will grow faster than the economy."

Tech investors should pay particular attention to software companies, Whyman has said. "What's relatively less developed and offers the most value added is software," he told Barron's. "We're going through the greatest transformation in the software industry since software has been invented, and at the heart of it are the software-infrastructure companies: Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, BEA Systems and Sun Microsystems."

Precursor used to be part of investment bank Legg Mason, but in June 2000 spun off to become an independent research firm. Before Legg Mason, Whyman was a consultant with McKinsey. He was a director on the National Security Council and National Economic Council during President Bill Clinton's administration, and has had economic and technology policy jobs in Washington, D.C. and abroad.

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Since November, the 19-year-old Lahiji has become a minor sensation in the investing world. He has a popular Web site, he's been compared to a raw basketball superstar, and offered the chance to run his own mutual fund. He even has received the ultimate confirmation of celebrity status: a death threat. "I didn't even tell my parents about that one," Lahiji says.

That's not to say that he doesn't have his share of typical teen troubles, such as angst over the opposite sex. "I think of girls like I think of stocks," Lahiji says. "A lot of girls I talk to are near 52-week lows."

Perhaps it's a monk's devotion to Wall Street purity. While others his age obsess over things that Lahiji dismisses as "extracurricular" activities, he spends, by his own description, 12 to 16 hours a day researching stocks.

He started as a reclusive kid who started investing at age 11 when he preferred to pore through business books in the library rather than hang out in the nearby playground. Even now, his favorite reading materials are still the company summaries published by Hoover's Finance, which he peruses every couple of months.

He took his interest to uncharted waters a little more than a year ago, when he decided to order every annual report published by a U.S. company -- all 12,000 of them. Lahiji says he read every single one, and he certainly seems to know something about just about any publicly-traded company you care to name. But it's the little guys who really caught his eye -- companies with good products or services, little or no debt, no analyst coverage and almost no investors.

Lahiji saw small-cap and microcap companies as an area where a dogged researcher could get an information edge, and in November he started an imaginary $10 million investment vehicle, The Lahiji Tiny Fund, to test the theory. It has held up so far: in its first six months, the Fund is up more than 75 percent collectively.

What about large and midcap companies? In the black-and-white world of Lahiji's teenage eyes, they're "weenie" stocks, companies that no longer need investors' capital and now only trade to line the pockets of Wall Street suits. For him, microcaps represent the capitalist ideal of small companies trying to change the world.

As for the rest of Wall Street, name a segment and Lahiji probably has something to say about it.

Institutions that short stocks? "It's un-American. It's one of the most disgusting things I've seen in my life. I just cannot stand how they go about doing their business."

Sell-side analysts? "I don't want to be one of those typical analysts who drives a Series 7 BMW ... and only recommends what his boss tells him to pick."

Large brokers and investment bankers? "It is a very superficial segment that favors the highly affluent."

Mutual fund managers who don't visit their investments? "I found it obtuse. ... People get a lot of money for not doing a darned thing."

Brash pronouncements for someone whose profits are mostly fictional. But he tries not to be so brash about his brief record of picking stocks. "There really is no secret," Lahiji says. "If you can research stocks 16 hours a day, you'll find good ones."

It might not be that easy, it's certainly dull and it takes more time than most people can commit -- but it is doable by any reasonably intelligent person, says Sanjay Nawalkha, professor of finance at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Nawalkha, who has spoken to Lahiji about his work, believes the teen can be a good role model for individual investors.

"He's a good inspiration to people," Nawalkha says. "He can get them excited about reading these annual reports. It can be done."

Lahiji will be the first to admit that he has also been fortunate. By his own count, 81 of the 150 stocks mentioned on his Web site have fallen in value since he highlighted them. The Tiny Fund's profits come from less than a dozen stocks -- welcome to the volatile world of microcaps, although Lahiji believes he can achieve a more consistent rate of success. "There's a lot of luck involved, don't get me wrong," he says.

Luck or not, his performance has been enough to get him profiled in BusinessWeek and Barron's. Lahiji says he is now flooded with 50 to 60 phone calls and 300 e-mails a day. Lahiji says five to 10 companies contact him a day, begging for some publicity from him. "I'm very reluctant to do that," he says. "I have to show interest in the company first. I'm very honest with them...Amazingly enough, a lot of them respect that."

He also claims to have received 41 job offers over the past year, and one proposal to run his own mutual fund, backed by a rich scrap yard owner. Yet despite his embrace of the markets, he's trying to resist the call of steady money -- not to mention pressure from his parents. "They've been very supportive, but now they say 'You have to accept one of these, you can't turn all of them down,' " Lahiji says. "But that's the last thing I worry about, is how much money I'm going to make. If you're good at what you do, the people and money will come."

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