Winning With The Net Current Asset Value Approach to Stocks

Not too long ago my Amazon (AMZN) suggestions page recommended a book called The Net Current Asset Approach to Stock Investing. I was intrigued as I have been using net current asset value as a way to select stocks for decades now and apart from the occasional mention in a book or academic study it is rarely talked about. The book was written by an investment advisor from Saint Louis by the name of Victor Wendl. I have not met Mr. Wendl as of yet but after reading his impressive book that a condition I intend to remedy soon. In the book the author has undertaken a rigorous study of the results of buying stock trading at 75% of net current assets or less. This approach simply takes the current assets of a company, things that can be turned into cash relatively quickly, and subtracts all liabilities. Fixed assets such as buildings, equipment and machinery are not included in the calculation. Neither are intangible assets like good will, patents or brands. The resulting number is net current assets, or NCA, of the company. If one can purchase shares when the market capitalization of the company is less than the NCA value history has shown this to be a profitable venture. The method was developed by Benjamin Graham back in the 1930s and has been used by a handful of true deep value investors in the 90 plus years since then to rack up some pretty impressive gains in individual securities. There have been several studies to document the fact and I can tell you from personal experience that the net returns on stocks I have purchased at a discount to NCA over almost 3 decades have been more than satisfactory. Mr. Wendl did a thorough study of the returns available from buying stocks at a discount to NCA. He used the S&P Compustat database and examined all stocks listed on the NYSE, AMEX and Nasdaq markets, including all the ones that have disappeared via bankruptcy or takeover thought the years. He looked at the years of 1950 to 2009, a 60 year data set that covers some wildly changing market conditions. The minimum market capitalization he used was $25 million since smaller stocks are very illiquid. I will not that I suspect this hurts the overall returns as some of most successful NCA stocks traded for less than that amount over they years. He rebalanced the portfolios just once a year. The results are impressive to say the least. His portfolios spread the money around equally among stocks trading at 75% or less of NCA value each year with a maximum allocation of 10% to any one stock. If there were not 10 stocks meeting the criteria the balance was in treasury bills. Over the 60 year period of time the portfolio compounded at 19.89% annually, almost double the 10.67% return of the stock market as measured by the S&P 500 index. To put that in dollar terms $1 invested in the index results in a not too shabby $586.22/ $1 invested in the net current asset approach yields $138,161 a slight improvement over the market to say the least. Incredibly over the 1 year holding period more than 70% of the stocks moved higher. The book goes on to examine investing in these stocks from several other aspects but Ill let you discover those on your one. One final piece of information might be more relevant to helping you understand just how well this approach can work for you. The period between 2000 and 2009 was one of the worst periods in stock market history with investors in the index losing an average of 1.19%. Investors using the NCA approach saw their holdings compound by 27.04% over the same period of time. Instead of a net loss each $1 invested grew to $14.49% during what many have called the lost decade for the stock market. These are fantastic numbers that might lead you to wonder why everyone is not doing this with their money. The large institutions might want to but they simply cannot. Most of the stocks are just too small in size for a multibillion dollar fund to invest in these issues. If you take one of the net-net stocks I hold now Gencor (GENC) a $1 billion fund wishing to take a 2% position in the stock would be investing $20 million and own more than 25% of the company. They are simply shut out of the net current asset strategy by size and liquidity issues. Most individual investors simply do not have the psychological makeup to implement this approach. You are buying stocks that are down in price, usually substantially so. They are not the popular darling stocks everyone likes to talk about and many times they will be companies you have never heard of before. It is not a trading oriented approach and there is very little buying and selling activity over the course of a year. There is no “action” and the only excitement is from seeing your account balance grow over time. You are going to be away from the herd with no social or peer validation of the strategy and most of your colleagues and friends will think you are nuts when you mention that you purchased shares of an Italian furniture company and a chain of music stores below liquidation value. Most people simply cannot execute this long term patient disciplined approach to investing. Buying stocks at a discount to net current asset value works and has for an extended period of time. It is worth your time to learn more about this investing strategy and put it to work for yourself.