Though I can't do that with NYSE stocks, for the 1700 covered by Value Line
that strategy returns around 9.5%/year, assuming .4% cost per trade (obviously not more than once per year).
Average of all 252 possible sets of trade dates Jan 1986 to date.
The return for that whole set of stocks in the same interval is 10.6%/year.

Okay, using backtest.org:

1. dpc < 50 (debt as % of capital less than 50%)
2. enw top 5 (top 5 by "earned on net worth")

I get 21% for an annual hold vs. 10% for the S&P going back to 1986. That does include a rather insane +557% in 2009 though!

Too bad one can't see the actual picks. Because this screen looks useless prior to 1999 and then takes off like a rocket the last 13 years. Looks pretty unstable I must say ...