The 7 Largest Steel Players Near 52-Week Lows

If you're aiming to "buy low and sell high," then it makes infinite sense to start your search with bargain-priced stocks. Regularly reviewing a list of stocks trading near their 52-week lows can be a great first step.

Here, I'll try to do the initial legwork for you. To prevent us from being inundated with scores of disparate companies, I'll conduct my search by industry. This will allow us to make some initial comparisons among semi-related companies.

Today, let's look at steel stocks. Below are the seven largest companies in this space that are within 20% of their 52-week lows.

Company	Recent Price	52-Week Low	52-Week High	Trailing P/E Ratio	Price-to-Book Ratio
Vale S.A. (NYSE: VALE  )	$26.93	$24.08	$37.25	5.6	1.7
ArcelorMittal (NYSE: MT  )	$20.17	$19.07	$38.88	9.3	0.5
POSCO (NYSE: PKX  )	$89.69	$86.73	$120.98	7.6	0.8
Companhia Siderurgica Nacional (NYSE: SID  )	$9.34	$8.01	$18.41	7.2	3.0
Nucor (NYSE: NUE  )	$34.36	$31.35	$49.24	23.2	1.5
Mechel OAO (NYSE: MTL  )	$17.31	$16.42	$34.74	8.2	1.4
Allegheny Technologies (NYSE: ATI  )	$46.26	$39.96	$73.53	33.7	1.8

Sources: Capital IQ (a division of Standard & Poor's) and Yahoo! Finance.

Cyclical stocks often allow for large discounts when stock market confidence wavers. We've certainly seen steel stocks suffer recently as economic concerns have weighed on the stock market. We see some P/E ratios that are quite low, but one thing to note about cyclical stocks is that due to their natural earnings fluctuations, earnings multiples can be misleading. It's better to look at earnings through a full market cycle rather than over just one year.

Earlier this month, I personally bought shares of Motley Fool Stock Advisor pick Nucor on weakness. For more on Nucor, check out fellow Fool Jordan DiPietro's write-up from back when he bought shares in his real-money portfolio. 

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