Cramer on BloggingStocks: The X factor

Posted Mar 27th 2008 8:35AM by Jim Cramer
Filed under: Market Matters, U.S. Steel (X), Nucor Corp (NUE), Reliance Steel and Aluminum (RS), Stocks to Buy, Cramer on BloggingStocks

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says U.S. Steel is a puzzle, and he ponders how to play it here.

U.S. Steel (NYSE: X) (Cramer's Take) presents the ultimate conundrum. It is hitting on all cylinders, courtesy of the incredible demand for steel domestically because of pipelines. And it is finally not suffering from dumped imports, because the dumpers are from countries growing so much faster than we are that they need all the steel they can get - China, for example, is struggling to build its own share instead of dumping.

John Surma, the CEO, has taken this once-great company right back to greatness with a rise from $9 to $127 in five years. That defies gravity. He has done that by cutting labor costs and growing the business, he has done it by emphasizing areas he can dominate and cutting ones he can t. And he has done it by taking advantage of the 30 bankruptcies in this sector, leaving him one of the few publicly traded companies left, including Nucor (NYSE: NUE) (Cramer's Take), which is a great company, AK Steel (NYSE: AKS) (Cramer's Take), which levitates all of the time on takeover talk and then DOESN'T come in, and Reliance (NYSE: RS) (Cramer's Take), which is another fave of mine.

So what's the conundrum? How about the fact that it is at its 52-week high as we go into a recession, and when it goes down it goes down in frightening gobs that shock you and make you want to sell -- typically exacerbated, of course, by the lack of uptick rules that make it so the short-sellers quickly overcome the company's fairly aggressive $6 billion buyback. (It is unheard-of, by the way, to see a steel company with enough excess capital after the much-needed capital expenditures of the steel industry, but Surma, who is also a great guy, has been able to wrench enough capital to buy it back nicely.)

My advice: We are overbought, wait for the bears to raid it. But then buy it because the year seems to be baked in already. Oh, and compare that to the much-loved tech sector, which isn't even baked in for the second quarter.

RELATED LINKS:

Jim Cramer is a director and co-founder of TheStreet.com. He contributes daily market commentary for TheStreet.com's sites and serves as an adviser to the company's CEO. At the time of publication, Cramer had no positions in the stocks mentioned.

Tags: ak steel, aks, AkSteel, featured, jim cramer, JimCramer, nucor, nue, reliance, rs, u.s. steel, U.s.Steel, us steel, UsSteel, x