Richard Beddard recently looked at chart produced by Morgan Stanley showing which investment strategies are suited to each market phase (bull. bear etc.), and, quite correctly, commented that he did not think it possible to anticipate changes is market phase well enough. I think Richard underestimates the dangers of Morgan Stanley's suggestions, and I think that there is a better alternative that I have suggested before.
The danger lies in the weaknesses of the strategies if you switch out too late. If you buy growth and on momentum at the peak, you better be out of it before the bubble bursts, because those high fliers are going to see the worst crashes when it does. Being too slow at the other transitions would not be as bad, but it would still lead to under-performance.
What I think would work better is to be contrarian on strategy: something I have discussed briefly already. As a bull run gathers pace investors tend to lose interest in value, and concentrate on growth, because that is that is performing well. This leads to value becoming under-valued and growth over-valued. Not the causality: the valuations are a result of a change investors attitudes that cannot be justified by a change in fundamentals.
If you reach a stage when it is difficult to find people who are interested in value, that is the time to buy it.
The converse happens when markets crash, and persists for some time afterwards. That is the time to buy growth, when everyone else is playing it safe and buying value and worrying about financial strength (not that I am recommending buying companies close to insolvency).
To summarise: whatever is unfashionable is cheap, whatever everyone else is buying is over-rated.
The evidence is that value does better than growth over the long term, so if you must stick to one strategy, buy value, especially financially strong income shares. On the other hand, consistently swimming against the crowd's mentality is the way to find bargains. That said, I am not keen on being contrarian at the level of particular securities or commodities as that leads to buying deservedly cheap junk.