Stock pickers are piling into these 6 stocks

Bank of America Merrill Lynch has released its quarterly list of the most overowned stocks held by active managers.

The set is part of a larger report on "active managers' holdings" from the bank's equity and quant strategy group that was sent to clients Tuesday.

To be considered overowned, securities (excluding real estate investment trusts, or REIT's) must be at least 1.5x their weight in the S&P 500 in the fund manager composite, and held by more than 35% of funds in the sample.

"History suggests one should watch out for crowded stocks at the beginning of the year: based on our data since 2009, the 10 most overweight stocks have lagged the 10 most underweight stocks on average by 57bp and 117bp during the first 15 and 30 calendar days of the year, respectively," the bank said.

Here's the full list of overowned stocks, sorted by relative weight: