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The opinions on consultants in the thread is largely negative and it's suggested hiring them is a sign of organisational dysfunction. If you can find information on consulting spend in annual reports you could create a "consultant factor" for stocks and see if big spenders underperform.

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There’s a level of dysfunction that causes a company to acknowledge the issue and hire consultants. And then there’s a level of dysfunction that causes the company to not acknowledge the issue and not hire consultants. The latter level is higher

That relies on the premise that stock performance is somehow correlated with health or overall performance of a company. I think we have recently seen plenty of evidence that the correlation is likely only weak (and I'm not just talking about GME).

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