This analysis is from John Derrick, U.S. Global Investors Director of Research. The market has rallied dramatically since the March 9 low, with the biggest beneficiary of this rally being low-quality companies. This intuitively makes sense, given that companies with the most troubled outlooks are the ones most likely to have a strong recovery when the dire outcomes predicted at the bottom of the crisis failed to transpire. Quality may have different meanings to different investors, but in a recent research piece, Citigroup ranked performance based on multiple definitions of quality. Samp;P earnings quality ranking, debt-to-capitalization ratio and return on equity were used as proxies for quality. The research universe was the small-cap Russell 2000 Index, but I believe broader market conclusions can be drawn as well. Based on Samp;P earnings quality rankings, companies with C or D (the two lowest categories) ratings returned about 55 percent over the past six months, while the ...