Stocks have risen sharply to record highs since Republican Donald Trump was elected president in November, and the best-performing equities have floated up from the bottom of the barrel.

“Over the past three months, investors in developed market equities have been bidding up lower-quality stocks,” says Eric Bush, a portfolio manager at Gavekal Capital Llc. in Denver. “Stocks with the lowest sales growth have returned 7 percent while stocks with the highest sales growth have returned -0.9 percent.”

Bush says lower-quality companies have a paltry return on equity, high debt or sluggish sales.

“The decile of stocks that have the most debt have returned 9 percent over the past three months while the average return for the other nine deciles is just 1.3 percent and stocks with the least amount of debt have fallen by -1.4 percent,” he writes in a blog post.

The S&P 500 rose about 6 percent to a record after Trump won the election on a platform of lower taxes, less regulation, better-quality jobs and greater spending on roads, bridges and airports. Consumer sentiment and small-business optimism also have soared on the on the promise of improved growth.

Meanwhile, some higher-quality companies are getting bid up in “crowded trades,” according to a report by Credit Suisse.

The list of large-cap companies that are most owned by fund managers includes Microsoft, Apple, Alphabet and JPMorgan Chase, according to the Swiss investment bank.

• Credit Suisse: Beware of 25 Stocks Everyone Already Owns
• David Rosenberg: Be Careful Wishing for Dow 20,000