How many US stocks pass Warren Buffett's investment checklist in 2026?

As of July 2026, exactly 20 of 4,907 screenable US stocks (0.4%) pass all seven quantitative criteria: ROE above 20%, 5-year average ROE above 18%, ROCE above 15%, net margin above 15%, debt-to-equity below 0.5, interest coverage above 5x, and market cap above $5 billion.

Why doesn't Apple pass the Buffett screen?

Apple fails the debt-to-equity test. Years of debt-funded buybacks have shrunk its book equity, pushing debt-to-equity above the 0.5 threshold even though the underlying business remains highly profitable.

What is the cheapest stock that passes the Buffett checklist?

Arch Capital (ACGL) at roughly 7.8x earnings, followed by Canadian Natural Resources at 8.8x and Range Resources at 10x. Five of the twenty qualifying stocks trade under 15x earnings.

We Ran Buffett's Checklist on 4,907 US Stocks. Only 20 Passed.

We screened every US stock through seven Buffett-style quality filters — high sustained ROE, fat margins, low debt. Just 0.4% passed. Here are all 20 names, with the data.

Warren Buffett never published a screener query, but his letters describe a repeatable checklist: a business that earns high returns on equity year after year without leverage doing the work, keeps fat margins, carries little debt, and covers its interest many times over.

We translated that checklist into seven hard filters and ran it against every screenable US stock on DeltaScreener — 4,907 companies on the NYSE and NASDAQ as of July 19, 2026:

Return on equity above 20%
Average ROE above 18% for five straight years
Return on capital employed above 15%
Net margin above 15%
Debt-to-equity below 0.5
Interest coverage above 5x
Market cap above $5 billion

Exactly 20 stocks passed. That's 0.4% of the US market.

The 20 stocks that pass Buffett's checklist right now

The giants (over $1 trillion)

NVIDIA (NVDA) — ROE 111.7%, net margin 63.0%, debt/equity 0.07. The most profitable large business in America by these measures.
Alphabet (GOOGL) — ROE 39.0%, net margin 37.9%, debt/equity 0.19.
Microsoft (MSFT) — ROE 33.1%, net margin 39.3%, and the cheapest mega-cap on the list at 23x earnings.
Meta Platforms (META) — ROE 33.2%, net margin 32.8%, 21.5x earnings.

Notably absent: Apple (fails the debt-to-equity test), Amazon (fails the net margin test), and Tesla (fails the consistency test).

The semiconductor toll-booths

Applied Materials (AMAT) — ROE 38.9%, net margin 29.3%
Lam Research (LRCX) — ROE 66.8%, net margin 30.9%
Teradyne (TER) — ROE 28.8%, almost zero debt at 0.03 debt/equity

Chip equipment makers dominate the mid-list — they sell the picks and shovels of the AI buildout with software-like margins.

The quiet compounders most investors have never screened for

Monster Beverage (MNST) — ROE 26.7% with literally zero debt
Fastenal (FAST) — ROE 33.8% selling nuts and bolts
Kinsale Capital (KNSL) — ROE 25.7% at just 14.5x earnings
Arch Capital (ACGL) — ROE 20.5% at 7.8x earnings — the cheapest stock on the entire list
Jack Henry (JKHY) — ROE 24.9% with 0.04 debt/equity
ResMed (RMD), DexCom (DXCM), Cadence (CDNS), InterDigital (IDCC), RLI Corp (RLI), Canadian Natural (CNQ), Range Resources (RRC) round out the list.

What the data says about quality in 2026

Three observations from running this screen:

Quality is scarcer than it looks. 4,887 of 4,907 US stocks fail at least one of Buffett's seven tests. Most fail the five-year consistency requirement — one great year is common, five in a row is rare.
You don't have to pay 40x for it. Five of the twenty trade under 15x earnings (ACGL, CNQ, RRC, RLI, KNSL). Quality and value overlap more than the growth-vs-value debate suggests.
The list is barbell-shaped. Mega-cap tech on one end, sub-$10B insurers and energy producers on the other — and almost nothing in between from the consumer, healthcare, or industrial sectors.

Run it yourself

This screen updates live — the list will change as earnings come in. You can run it (and edit any filter) here: Buffett checklist screen with live results, or explore all 100 prebuilt screens. Both are free and require no sign-up.

Methodology note: data as of July 19, 2026, from DeltaScreener's fundamentals database (FMP-sourced, TTM basis). "Buffett checklist" refers to quantitative criteria inspired by Berkshire Hathaway's published acquisition criteria and shareholder letters; it is a screening heuristic, not investment advice, and Berkshire does not necessarily own these stocks.