TLDR; Do not buy into the steel industry into the economy decides what the fuck it wants to do.

I am bearish on the steel industry and especially X. I look at this stock from a macro view and do not even get into the numbers and where I think a good price to purchase or short would be.

The steel business is highly cyclical in my opinion and I think we may be reaching the top of our cycle and are in for a dry spell.

The price of steel as illustrated below is recovering from very low levels. The economy was steadily growing, so why did the steel market drop off suddenly? The primary driver of the price of steel was the influx of foreign importation of steel. (Source 1) When the Chinese economy began to slow down, China (state-funded) steel producers began to export millions of tons of steel into foreign economies at cheaper prices than their own domestic products could produce. (Side story: China, like many foreign economies used to produce garbage steel prior to their growth in their economy. Then companies in America started to expand into these global markets, creating brand new state of the art facilities that rival and better most of the steel mill’s back home. So in a sense, we played ourselves.) With the new duties increased “five-fold” whatever the fuck that means, the price of steel slowly began to go up. Other factors that caused this was the idling of many United States facilities. This is where USS pivoted very well. They began a mass layoff of high-wage unionized workers, and started to bring facilities to 100 percent capacity rather than having multiple facilities fully staffed at 70% percent capacity. When the price of steel dropped, demand went up, thus creating the spike in the price with a nice additional bump from imported steel tariffs. If you whole-heartedly believe demand will not fallout over the next 6 months than go ahead and invest into X.

http://imgur.com/a/6PHX4

So you read above and you think to yourself, why be this moron bearish on X? The price of steel has gone up, capacity at X is filled, and there should be fewer imports to worry about.
Reason numero uno. The steel industry is cyclical and we had a huge bull run for about 8 months. The price of steel sky-rocketed to manageable levels.

Short term I see the price of steel decreasing 20-30 percent where it will rest for a while waiting on the US economy to decide what to do. And with that, the price of X will drop into the low teens in January/February time frame.

Reason number two as to why I wouldn’t invest in X. Point blank, this not a moon shot type of stock, chances are if you think it is going to be on a bull run, you can see a few days of green and a down day prior to getting in. Their dividend history is absolute garbage and I’m not even sure why they still pay one out. In reality it is probably to appease a large shareholder or something.

So you have gotten this far and you still want to invest into X. The second factor that I would like to point out to show that the price of steel will inevitably go down is the price of Iron Ore. In the chart below, you’ll see that when compared to the price of steel chart that correlate. As the price of Iron Ore goes up, so does the price of steel. Iron Ore pricing will increase or stay the same as the price of steel decreases. (Source 3) S&P upgraded its forecast for Iron Ore and it seems like pricing will stay relatively flat for the foreseeable future. As pricing stays neutral and the price of steel dips off, X will see decreased margins.

http://imgur.com/a/3BPqM

The last thing I would like to bring up is the fact that X's biggest competitor in the U.S. is a company called Nucor. They are a mini-mill, meaning they do not use earthly elements to produce steel. They basically just melt down scrap. The price of scrap will stay deflated well beyond this bull run of steel because of the world market being slow. As steel mill's slow down capacity and the economy slows, there will be glut of steel leftover in warehouses. What happens to steel when it sits a dark damp environment, it rusts and ultimately gets scrapped. Just some food for thought.

Sources ourcesSource 1: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-china-steel-idUSKCN0Y82ER Source 2: http://www.dividend.com/dividend-stocks/industrial-goods/metal-fabrication/x-us-steel/#payout-history-summary Source 3: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/markets/iron-ore-price-snaps-foursession-losing-streak-as-sp-lifts-forecast/news-story/58367a544465cf2941d9f4311ae06b11