Seeking out opportunities in Japan

The suggestion he might be doing cartwheels down the streets of Tokyo might be bestowing the late Benjamin Graham with an unlikely athletic prowess.

Nevertheless, were he alive today, the legendary value investor would be salivating at the incredibly low valuations to be found in the Japanese stock market. We have been running a monthly screen looking for profitable stocks trading below book value with net cash on the balance sheet. This screen highlights a mere three stocks in the US, 10 in the UK and none in Continental Europe. By contrast, at the end of July there were 426 stocks within Japan’s Topix index that fulfilled these criteria, representing a remarkable 25.5% of the market. And the truly extraordinary thing is only fou...