Cleveland-Cliffs Inc. is a leading steel supplier and the largest flat-rolled steel company in North America. The company also specializes in iron ore, including all aspects of mining, pelletizing, and beneficiation. Cleveland-Cliffs has approximately 25,000 employees, and its shares are a component of the S&P 500.

Earnings season is in full swing, a time when insider-transaction volume always slows because of trading restrictions that are in place for corporate executives, directors, and beneficial owners. While that typically results in 'weak' volume-deprived insider-sentiment readings, we note that the major stock indices are also at or near all-time highs. And investors of all stripes, insiders included, are known to take money off the table when the stocks they own have never been so valuable. End of day, there are viable explanations for insider-sentiment data that is less than stellar, as is the case now. Looking at the weekly data from Vickers Stock Research, the NYSE One-Week Sell/Buy Ratio is now 8.38; the same ratio for the Nasdaq is 8.91; and the Total (all exchanges) ratio is 8.68. Those readings are on a scale where any result above 6.00 is bearish. But based on the above offsets, we are far from suggesting that the sky is likely to fall. Drilling down to sector sell/buy ratios, four sectors recorded bullish one-week sell/buy ratios over the past week, while two recorded bearish sentiment. Communication Services, Healthcare, Real Estate, and Utility were all bullish during the period, while Information Technology and Materials were bearish. While volume was light across most sectors, this was not the case for Information Technology, where 174 transactions resulted in a particularly high (bearish) sell/buy ratio of 173.0. Zooming out, six sectors recorded a bullish eight-week sell/buy ratio, including Consumer Discretionary, Consumer Staples, Financial, Healthcare, Industrial, and Real Estate, while Communication Services, Energy, and Information Technology were bearish. This week, analysts at Vickers highlighted insider transactions of interest at United Rentals Inc. (NYSE: URI) and PriceSmart Inc. (NGS: PSMT).

To date, 2026 has been a volatile year for stocks. The major indices started the year by moving higher, but that changed with the onset of the war with Iran on February 28. As oil prices began to climb rapidly, stock prices fell inversely. The Mag7 were out, but now seem to be back in (or at least most of them). AI was in and remains in. Of note, this is President Trump's second year in office, and typically, the second year of a presidency is weak for stocks. Meanwhile, inflation is slowly-and-steadily inching higher again and interest rates haven't budged since the Federal Reserve's last rate cut in December. In 1Q26, the S&P 500 fell 4.3%. In the Argus universe of more than 500 public companies, the average share-price decline was 0.3%, and the median decline was 2%. The following stocks are the top-10 and the bottom-five performers from the Argus universe during 1Q. Among the winners, we note that five are from Information Technology, two from Materials, two from Energy, and one from Healthcare. Why do we study past performance? We want to know which stocks weathered the storms that were presented, the mix of sector performance, and the emergence of new names in the performance derby.

Cleveland-Cliffs Inc. is a leading steel supplier and the largest flat-rolled steel company in North America. The company also specializes in iron ore, including all aspects of mining, pelletizing, and beneficiation. Cleveland-Cliffs has approximately 25,000 employees, and its shares are a component of the S&P 500.