Ben Graham was interested in companies selling for less than their net working capital, which is current assets minus current liabilities, not merely less than the cash on their books. Bank of America has 312 billion in cash and 629 billion in debt. The article's "conclusion" does not follow from looking at the market or companies mentioned through the lens of Ben Graham. sigh
Benjamin Graham looked for equities trading at less than 66% of their Net Current Asset Value.
Where, NCAV (Net Current Asset Value) = Current Assets - TOTAL Liabilities.
Note that Graham calculated NCAV using total liabilities, and not just current liabilities. By using only current assets he also excluded plant and equipment, and goodwill in his calculation of NCAV. This is important, because during liquidation all creditors will demand repayment, but the valuation of plant and equipment will be impaired.
The 66% discount to NCAV provided Graham a "margin of safety".
The modern-day equivalent of NCAV is "book to tangible book value". What you want is equities that have a "book to tanglible book" ratio less than 1, a debt-to-total-equity ratio of less than 1, a price-to-earnings ratio that is competitive with peers in its sector, and a "book-to-total-free-cash-flow' ratio in the low single digits.
See ExxonMobil, for instance.
You can find all of these valuation ratios on the Reuters website.
This is why Graham consistently says, at least in the "Intelligent Investor", to do your own research. Letting others tell you what to do in such a potentially risky action as investing in particular stocks is just plain dumb. Look at the facts yourself and make your own conclusions.
