Why BHP, Freeport-McMoRan, and Steel Dynamics Stocks Sank Thursday
Metals and mining stocks were in freefall Thursday, with players in the base metals segment doing particularly poorly. Here's how much some of the worst-performing stocks in the metals and mining industry had fallen at the close of trading Thursday:
While Freeport-McMoRan is a copper giant, BHP deals in iron ore, copper, and metallurgical coal, among other things. Steel Dynamics, as the name suggests, is a steel producer. Despite the diversity of their businesses, a couple of common themes hit them all Thursday. Those were the two Cs: China and commodity prices.
On Tuesday, iron ore prices crashed below $100 per metric ton for the first time in nearly five weeks, while copper prices fell for the fifth consecutive month in August. Steel prices also sank lower.
Source Fool.com
