The Big Picture has a thumbnail summary of the annual Merrill Lynch US Equity and US Quant Strategy pieces, where they interview 100 large institutional managers. Of particular interest to me was the top ten return factors by popularity.
via The Big Picture (click on image to enlarge)
You can see that relative strength did not crack the top ten. On the bigger chart, which you can see in the article, relative strength came in at #11. Of course, there are many formulations of relative strength, so even that ranking probably covers a lot of different methods.
A number of the popular factors are value-related and some are based on profitability. All of these factors ultimately interact in complicated ways, but you don’t have to worry about a crowded trade in relative strength.
Value, quality, and risk-related factors are all much more popular than relative strength.
via The Big Picture (click on image to enlarge)
