NUE reports this morning with options traders carrying their most defensive posture of the past year — and the stock has kept rallying anyway.
The defensive lean in options has intensified since the July 24 preview. The put/call ratio has climbed further to 0.74, now 3.3 standard deviations above its 20-day average of 0.59 — the highest z-score reading in at least 52 weeks. That is a meaningful escalation from the 2.5-sigma level flagged four days ago. The stock, meanwhile, has not flinched: NUE added another 7.4% on the week to close at $247.86, outpacing close peers STLD (+4.9%) and RS (+3.0%). The borrow market offers no corroborating bearish signal — availability is exceptionally loose, with roughly 188 million shares still available to lend and cost to borrow having fallen nearly 46% on the week to a negligible 0.28%.
The analyst community remains broadly constructive going into the print. Most targets cluster between $258 and $283, implying 4–14% upside from current levels. Barclays lifted its target to $272 last week while holding Overweight. BofA trimmed to $280 from $290, maintaining Buy. Morgan Stanley, the most cautious major voice, raised its Equal-Weight target to $258 from $227 — a significant move, but still below where NUE trades today. Keybanc upgraded to Overweight in late June with a $274 target. The bears' case rests on non-residential construction softness and domestic steel pricing pressure; bulls point to Nucor's cost discipline, momentum in EPS estimates (ranked in the 85th percentile on 90-day EPS momentum), and a dividend score in the 94th percentile.
One institutional footnote worth noting: Berkshire Hathaway trimmed its position by roughly 2.5 million shares as of the March quarter — a reduction of about 39% of its prior holding. That is the most notable active holder move in the ownership data, though passive giants BlackRock and State Street added modestly in the June quarter.
Today's print will test whether Nucor's sharp summer rally — up more than 50% year-to-date by one recent measure — can be validated by earnings that justify the rerating, or whether the elevated options hedge reflects institutional awareness of a gap between the stock's momentum and the underlying steel pricing environment.
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