Metals Winners & Losers: Alcoa Surges
NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Shares of aluminum producers surged Tuesday, leading metals stocks into the green.
With the dollar weakening, investors continued to plunge into certain commodities. Aluminum futures jumped 1.8% and copper gained 1.7% in trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange Tuesday.
Alcoa
(AA) - Get Report
, the big Pittsburgh-based smelter, added 8% to $13.99 in hectic trading. Nearly 50 million shares of issue changed hands during the regular session. Average daily volume is 35 million.
Kaiser Aluminum
(KALU) - Get Report
, meanwhile, spiked 9.4% to $40.46.
Steel stocks also gained ground Tuesday. Better-than-expected monthly retail sales figures hinted at a strengthening economy, but, more to the point, weekly numbers indicated that steelmakers continue to boost production even as a number of market watchers and company executives worry that real demand for steel remains sluggish.
Nucor
(NUE) - Get Report
CEO Dan DiMicco
in a company statement offering financial guidance that projected a wider-than-expected loss for the third quarter.
Shares of Nucor rose 2% to $47.79, lagging most of its peers.
U.S. Steel
(X) - Get Report
, for instance, advanced 4.8% to $48.98 while
AK Steel
(AKS) - Get Report
jumped 5.7% to $23.11. American depositary receipts of the world's biggest steelmaker, Luxembourg's
ArcelorMittal
(MT) - Get Report
, added 3.5% to $41.67.
Elsewhere, copper giant
Freeport McMoRan
(FCX) - Get Report
saw its shares rise 1% to $71.32. The company is facing a political headwind in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where its Tenke Fungurume project has yet to settle its contract with the government, while its Grasberg mine in Papua, Indonesia, endured fresh violence over the weekend. Two security guards were injured in a shooting.
-- Written by Scott Eden in New York
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Scott Eden has covered business -- both large and small -- for more than a decade. Prior to joining TheStreet.com, he worked as a features reporter for Dealmaker and Trader Monthly magazines. Before that, he wrote for the Chicago Reader, that city's weekly paper. Early in his career, he was a staff reporter at the Dow Jones News Service. His reporting has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Men's Journal, the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times, and the Believer magazine, among other publications. He's also the author of Touchdown Jesus (Simon & Schuster, 2005), a nonfiction book about Notre Dame football fans and the business and politics of big-time college sports. He has degrees from Notre Dame and Washington University in St. Louis.
