Why Century Aluminum Stock Dropped 11% on Monday
Shares of aluminum producer Century Aluminum (NASDAQ: CENX) closed the day down 10.8% on Monday -- which was kind of curious. Century Aluminum hasn't published a press release in more than a month. It didn't report earnings today. It isn't expected to report earnings again, in fact, for another two months.
What's more, in contrast to the big drop we saw in Century Aluminum's stock price last month, the only news item today that would ordinarily have been expected to move Century Aluminum stock was something that one would expect to move the stock up, not down. S&P Global-Platts reports this morning that across the pond, London Metal Exchange (LME) stocks of aluminum have declined to just 1.15 million metric tons -- roughly half the 2.3 million metric tons reported at the beginning of this year.
Market pundits aren't entirely certain what to make of this development, noting that aluminum stocks may simply have been shifting away from expensive LME warehouses to cheaper warehouses and other countries. At the same time, Russian aluminum producer Rusal forecast earlier this year that aluminum demand would outstrip aluminum supply by approximately 700,000 metric tons in 2017 -- a development that might explain declining stockpiles of aluminum on the LME.
Source: Fool.com
