Is it true that smaller companies, loaded with debt and continuously losing money can outperform such high quality firms as Wal-Mart. Well, maybe.

In another of his illuminating columns, Mark Hulbert writes in the New York Times, “to an extent not seen in decades, shares of companies with weak balance sheets have been soaring, generally outperforming firms with stronger fundamentals.”

So is there any evidence other than just comparing a few weak and stronger companies? Ford Equity Research, an independent research firm based in San Diego, rates stocks’ financial quality based on a number of factors, including a company’s size, debt level, earnings history and industry stability. Hulbert notes that Ford Equity follows more than 4,000 stocks. Companies at the low end, in the bottom fifth of its ratings, generated an average stock market return of 152 percent from the beginning of March to the end of November, according to an analysis conducted for The New York Times.

And how did the high quality companies compare? The stocks in the highest quintile for quality — including Wal-Mart — produced an average gain of 66 percent over the same period, or roughly 85 percentage points less. “That is the biggest disparity over the first nine months of any bull market since 1970, which is the first year for which Ford Equity has quality ratings,” says Hulbert.

But Hulbert fails to come up with a good answer to why the underperformers are over-performing. He cites an interview in which Jeremy Grantham, the chief investment strategist at GMO, a money-management firm. He attributes the reason to the government’s huge stimulus program. By temporarily reducing the danger of incurring risk, the government had effectively encouraged huge amounts of risk-taking in financial markets. “The sizable disparity of junk over quality should not have come as a big surprise,” he said, “given how massive the government’s stimulus has been.”

But Grantham adds that over the longer term, “it’s almost a certain bet” that high-quality firms will outperform lower-quality stocks.