U.S Steel: Basic Materials For Growing Economies

First, I have to say its hard to find good long stock picks in this current market environment but I will continue to do so as many beaten up companies are at good values right now, and showing good chart pattern trade setups for long term investing, and even short term trades, in my opinion. I do have short picks, and maybe next week I'll list one. With my short picks, these are short term as I would rather focus on long picks that can benefit investors as well as traders.

My long stock pick this week is a company that was created more than 100 years ago - U.S Steel (X). The materials that this company produces and supplies are what built, and continue to build economies around the world. They also have diversified business in relation with their core steel business, making them an attractive and safe investment currently we believe.

With steel imports from China down, and all their steel being consumed there, U.S manufacturers will have to buy from U.S makers. If this remains to be the case, stocks like X should do well in the next 6 months.

The U.S Steel chart is showing intermediate and minor Elliottwave trade setups right now, providing what we consider a low risk high reward trade setup in this current liquidity crisis market environment.

U.S Steel Key Data

• Market Cap: 11.68B. P/E: 13.37.
• Dividend: 0.25.
• Forward P/E: 13.31. Yield: 1.01.
• Beta: 3.84.
• EPS: 7.39.
• Institutionally Owned: 88%.

U.S Steel Board of Directors declared a dividend of 25 cents per share on U. S. Steel Common Stock, an increase of 5 cents per share. The dividend is payable March 10, 2008, to stockholders of record at the close of business February 13, 2008.

United States Steel Corporation headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pa., manufactures a wide variety of steel sheet, tubular and tin products; coke, and taconite pellets; and has a worldwide annual raw steel capability of 26.8 million net tons. U. S. Steel's domestic primary steel operations are: Gary Works in Gary, Ind.; Great Lakes Works in Ecorse and River Rouge, Mich.; Mon Valley Works, which includes the Edgar Thomson and Irvin plants, near Pittsburgh and Fairless Works near Philadelphia, Pa.; Granite City Works in Granite City, Ill.; Fairfield Works near Birmingham, Ala.; Midwest Plant in Portage, Ind.; and East Chicago Tin in East Chicago, Ind. The company also operates two seamless tubular mills, Lorain Tubular Operations in Lorain, Ohio; and Fairfield Tubular Operations near Birmingham, Ala.

U. S. Steel produces coke at Clairton Works near Pittsburgh, at Gary Works and Granite City Works. On Northern Minnesota's Mesabi Iron Range, U. S. Steel's iron ore mining and taconite pellet operations, Minnesota Taconite (Minntac) and Keewatin Taconite (Keetac), support the steelmaking effort, and its subsidiary ProCoil Company provides steel distribution and processing services.

U. S. Steel has steelmaking subsidiaries in Kosice, Slovakia, Sabac and Smederevo, Serbia.

Internationally, In addition to primary steel operations, U. S. Steel participates in several joint ventures: USS-POSCO Industries (PKX), Pittsburgh, Ca.; PRO-TEC Coating Company, Leipsic, Ohio; Worthington Specialty Processing, Jackson, Mich.; Double Eagle Steel Coating Company (DBLE), Dearborn, Mich.; Double G Coating Company, Jackson, Miss.; and Acero Prime, San Luis Potosi, Mexico.

U. S. Steel is also involved in a number of other businesses, among them transportation Transtan Inc, real estate development, and leasing and financial services.

Disclosure: Author has a long position in X