Screening for ultimate bargains, is like catching Angel Fish in the River Thames

There are only three candidates in my ultimate bargain screen this month, none of which look particularly enticing:

NB: Here's the spreadsheet, you can find a short description of the screen on the shortlists page, and here are descriptions of the two variables: Price to net working capital, and Piotroski's F_Score.

Perennial bargain, Leeds Group is an investment company currently focused on textiles. I've profiled it in the past but not been tempted because of the poor investments it made in trying, and failing, to diversify from the undervalued business at its core.

Harvard International distributes consumer electronics, which as I'm finding with Armour, is a very tough market. That could spell opportunity, because expectations, and therefore prices, are very low. But Harvard's F_Score of three out of nine suggests it's getting into trouble, rather than getting out of it.

If Harvard's three spells trouble, then Northamber's F_Score of just two is doubly troubling as Northamber is already a member of the Thrifty 30 and although Sharelockholmes uses slightly different metrics to calculate the F_Score than the original paper published by Piotroski and, therefore me, we usually arrive at a similar figure.

Holding a company with an F_Score of two would difficult to justify unless most of the failures in the scoring system were marginal, but Northamber is an odd company. It appears to be slowly liquidating itself by continuing to pay a dividend. With its market price so low, its assets are worth more in our hands than in the company's, so it might actually be one of those businesses Ben Graham cherished. Worth more dead than alive.

Despite August's rout, this is a disappointing haul. That's partly because I restrict my search to companies reporting in the last four months so I can base my analysis on a recent annual report. But it means in the second half of the year, when fewer companies report, there are fewer fish in the river.