Papaya King: re. your question: "Do you have any favorites among the steels?" That's an interesting and more complex question than I first supposed. My reactive answer is all the steel stocks are ugly. There are no favorites. They mostly are all near lows (the ones I look at or own anyway) and when (if) one rises (assuming it's not for a buyout) they may (imo) all be rising in tandem, so choosing a favorite "best" might not be necessary.
I see that your STLD is a mini mill operator. I'd guess most people would consider NUE the mini mill leader. It's trading at lows only seen once before in the past six years. A competitor to STLD is BS. I like BS at its current price. It's under 4-- That looks like a 30 year low. In the past, people who've bought BS around 10 and held for a few years have seen a double. Right now though, it looks like the capital intensive nature of the business has caused Bessie to increase both number of shares outstanding and amount of long term debt. That's scary (to me) and the reason I hesitate to start a position.
If you consider steel stocks now because they've been hitting lows, then there've been a number of possible selections -whx, ltv, rou, et. al -from which you might choose. I've had SCHN on my watch list waiting for it to drop a bit more.
Right now, although I own a few steel stocks (e.g. AKS) I'm wondering if the opportunities aren't better with suppliers to the industry. Their stocks are down near lows also. Two that I own are UCR and CLF. (Also trucker BOYD, an intermediary between steel companies and their customers.)
fwiw
and note, since I'm the only one so far responding to your question: If this post reads like I actually know something about the relative merits of individual steel stocks or know about the steel industry, well I don't. And even worse, I have been wrong many, many times before.
Paul S. |
