What a net-net means now: 261 to 326

On 2026-09-07 a net-net, a listing priced below net current asset value per share, exists in the US market at least 261 times and at most 326. The usual claim is that this no longer exists, and the reason our answer is a range rather than a number is worth as much as the number.

Graham's deepest screen was to buy below net current asset value: current assets, minus every liability on the balance sheet, divided by the shares. Fixed assets counted for nothing. The idea was that at that price you were paying less than the liquid assets net of all debt, so the operating business came free.

Why the answer is a range

The public screener reports an exact match count only while the count is below fifty, and it cannot compare two of a listing's own fields against each other. So the test was built out of counts it can answer.

The price axis was cut into bands. Inside a band running from one price to a higher one, any listing whose net current asset value per share is at or above the top of the band is certainly trading below that value, because its price is below the top of the band by construction. Any listing trading below its net current asset value must have that value at or above the bottom of the band. The first count is a floor, the second is a ceiling, and narrowing the bands narrows the gap between them.

Twenty-six bands later the floor is 261 and the ceiling is 326. Both are exact counts of exactly stated conditions. The true figure is between them, and no query available without an account will close the gap further.

Where they are

The floor of 261 breaks down by share price like this. Each figure is the number of listings certainly below net current asset value in that band.

Half of them are under a dollar fifty and 229 of the 261 are under five dollars. Graham's screen has not disappeared from the US market. It has moved to the part of the market where a listing costs less than a coffee.

Size tells the same story. A sample of the fifty largest by market capitalisation among listings priced under five dollars with a net current asset value of five dollars or more had a median market capitalisation of 14 million dollars and a largest member of 555 million. Not one was worth a billion. By sector the sample ran healthcare 12, technology 11, industrials 7, financial services 4, consumer cyclical 4, consumer defensive 4, communication services 3, energy 2, real estate 2, basic materials 1.

Graham's actual rule was stricter

Buying below net current asset value was the boundary. The rule was to buy at two thirds of it, so that the discount absorbed the difference between what inventory and receivables are carried at and what they fetch.

Applying the same band method to that line: at least 183 listings traded at or below two thirds of net current asset value. The ceiling for that count could not be closed inside the ceiling on counts, so 183 is a floor with no useful upper bound attached.

What the number does not mean

On 2026-09-07 the figure existed for 4,363 of the 5,257 listings in the pool that day, or 83.0 percent, so between 6.0 and 7.5 percent of the listings that could be tested passed the test. That is not a rare event and it should make you ask what the test is now selecting for.

Three things it is likely selecting for, none of which Graham had in mind:

Cash raised and not yet spent. A company that listed recently, or raised money recently, holds cash as a current asset and has not yet turned it into the business it raised the money for. Its net current asset value is high for a reason that says nothing about the value of the business, and the market is pricing the burn rate.

Assets that will not convert. Net current asset value assumes inventory and receivables turn into cash at carrying value. In a business that is failing, they do not. The registry's own caveat on the metric says exactly this, and adds that when the screen fires on a large company, something is normally seriously wrong.

A per-share figure that is not per-listed-share. Where a company's US listing is a depositary receipt, the receipt and the underlying share are not the same unit, and one receipt can represent several shares or a fraction of one. A balance-sheet figure computed per underlying share compared against a price quoted per receipt is not a like-for-like comparison, and nothing in these counts detects that.

The honest summary

Net-nets are not extinct in the US market. They are numerous, they are almost all tiny, and the test has stopped selecting for the thing it was designed to select for, which was an established business trading below its liquidation value in a market that had lost interest in it.

The count is a starting point for reading fifty balance sheets, and it is worth exactly that.

What this leaves out

Every count is one reading of the public screener on 2026-09-07, against prices stamped 2026-08-26. The prices in the comparison were twelve days old when the counts were made, and a net-net test is a price test.

The floor and ceiling are both exact counts of exactly stated conditions. The true number of listings below net current asset value is between them and is not measured here. Publishing the midpoint as if it were the answer would be inventing a figure.

The two-thirds figure of 183 is a floor only. The corresponding ceiling ran into the count cap and is not reported rather than reported wrongly.

Net current asset value is computed from filed statements as current assets less total liabilities over diluted shares. Filings arrive quarterly, so a company that has spent its cash since its last filing still carries the old figure until the next one.

The sector and size figures come from a sample of fifty listings chosen by market capitalisation within one price and value band. They describe that sample and not the whole group.

Nothing here identifies anything worth owning. A listing below net current asset value is an arithmetic result about a balance sheet, and the balance sheet is a description of the past.