Why Cliffs Natural Resources Inc (CLF) is Trending

Traders are keenly watching Cliffs Natural Resources Inc (NYSE:CLF) after iron ore prices in China experienced the worst drop in over a year, falling 8.5% overnight. Given the interconnected global system and the fact that it supplies iron ore pellets to the North American steel industry, Cliffs Natural Resources Inc (NYSE:CLF) isn’t exactly immune to the spot price swings. Shares of the stock are lower today, by around 3.5%, in the pre-market in part due to the weaker iron ore prices in Asia.

In terms of analyst views, Wall Street is divided. In the bull camp is Michael Gambardella of JPMorgan, who has a $13 price target due to his belief that iron ore prices will strengthen and that Chinese steel demand will be robust. In the not-so-bullish camp is analyst Gordon Johnson of Axiom, who believes iron ore prices will likely be soft this year given the industry headwinds. Regardless of where iron ore goes, it certainly seems that Cliffs Natural Resources will be a volatile stock for the foreseeable future.

What Does The Smart Money Sentiment Say?

At Insider Monkey, we’ve developed an investment strategy that has delivered market-beating returns over the past 12 months. Our strategy identifies the 100 best-performing funds of the previous quarter from among the collection of 700+ successful funds that we track in our database, which we accomplish using our returns methodology. We then study the portfolios of those 100 funds using the latest 13F data to uncover the 30 most popular mid-cap stocks (market caps of between $1 billion and $10 billion) among them to hold until the next filing period. This strategy delivered 39.7% gains over the past 12 months and outperformed the 24.1% gain enjoyed by the S&P 500 ETFs. Our enhanced small-cap hedge fund strategy returned more than 45% over the last 12 months and outperformed SPY by more than 30 percentage points over the last 4.5 years (see details here).

Smart money sentiment concerning Cliffs Natural Resources Inc (NYSE:CLF) was more bullish in the fourth quarter. 28 top funds were long Cliffs Natural Resources Inc (NYSE:CLF) at the end of December, up 5 funds from the previous quarter. Meanwhile, the amount held increased to $359.49 million at the end of December, from $265.98 million at the end of September.

The Bottom Line

Cliffs Natural Resources Inc (NYSE:CLF) shares are on watch today due to lower iron ore prices. For more reading, check out ‘8 Countries That Produce The Most Iron In the World‘.

Disclosure:None