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Cleveland-Cliffs Stock Grinds Higher As Cash Story Turns

TIM SYKES•UPDATED APR. 24, 2026, 5:05 PM ET
Reviewed by Bryce Tuoheyand Fact-checked by Matt Monaco

Cleveland-Cliffs Inc. stocks have been trading up by 7.78 percent following upbeat sentiment around stronger steel demand.

Candlestick Chart

Live Update At 17:05:08 EDT: On Friday, April 24, 2026 Cleveland-Cliffs Inc. stock [NYSE: CLF] is trending up by 7.78%! Discover the key drivers behind this movement as well as our expert analysis in the detailed breakdown below.

Quick Financial Overview

CLF’s Q1 numbers tell a simple story: the business is improving, but the turnaround is not finished. Cleveland-Cliffs booked $4.92B in revenue, up from $4.63B a year ago, and beat Wall Street on both top line and adjusted EPS. The adjusted loss narrowed to $0.40 per share versus $0.93 last year, and steel cash margins moved back into positive territory, an important signal for traders tracking the core operation.

On the balance sheet, CLF carries about $18.61B in annual revenue and an enterprise value near $12.9B, with the stock trading around 0.29x sales and roughly 0.9x book. That pricing tells you the market still treats Cleveland-Cliffs as a cyclical, leveraged turnaround rather than a growth story. Profitability ratios stay negative, and free cash flow in Q1 was roughly -$477M, with operating cash flow at -$325M and meaningful working-capital drag.

Yet liquidity stands at $3.1B against $7.8B of long-term debt, and a current ratio of 2.0 shows CLF has room to maneuver. For short-term traders, the chart confirms the shift in tone: CLF has climbed from roughly $8.11 at the end of March to about $9.76, with buyers supporting higher lows and strong intraday bids above $9.50 on the latest session.

Why Traders Are Watching CLF Now

Cleveland-Cliffs is acting like a name coming out of a deep cycle low. The news flow backs that up. Management framed Q1 as the start of a sustained improvement, not a one-off bounce. CLF reaffirmed full-year shipment guidance, flagged a full order book, and pointed to stronger demand from automotive OEMs, a key anchor customer group for the company’s flat-rolled steel.

The big pivot for traders is cash. Cleveland-Cliffs is guiding to positive free cash flow starting in Q2 2026, with “strong” free cash flow in the back half of the year. A $500M EBITDA tailwind from a slab contract termination should help, as should cost reductions that CLF expects to kick in meaningfully in the second half. When a highly levered steel producer talks about a cash inflection, the equity story can re-rate fast if execution meets the script.

On the demand and pricing side, CLF is getting help from Washington. Management says U.S. trade enforcement has pushed steel imports to their lowest levels since the financial crisis. For a domestic-heavy producer like Cleveland-Cliffs, that means tighter supply, better pricing power, and clearer demand visibility. CLF also expects shipment volumes to rise from Q1 to Q2 and the sales mix to tilt further toward higher-margin business, which can juice earnings without heroic volume growth.

Balance sheet repair is the other key theme. Cleveland-Cliffs is selling eight non-EBITDA-contributing assets for about $425M and plans to use 100% of those proceeds, plus all operating cash flow, to pay down debt. With $3.1B of liquidity today and a goal of holding at least $2B while targeting 2.5x leverage and no note maturities from 2026–2028, CLF is spelling out the de-risking roadmap. Traders also have an eye on the POSCO talks. Management says discussions remain constructive and insists any deal will be done only at full and fair value, which signals discipline instead of empire-building.

More Breaking News

Conclusion

For active traders, CLF now sits at an interesting crossroads. The stock has sold off sharply earlier in the year, yet Cleveland-Cliffs just delivered a revenue beat, narrowed its loss, and turned steel cash margins positive. Guidance calls for profitability and positive free cash flow from Q2 2026 onward, backed by structural tailwinds like tougher trade enforcement and low import levels. At the same time, debt remains high, free cash flow was still negative in Q1, and CLF must actually hit those cost and volume targets to justify a higher multiple.

Analyst sentiment reflects that tension. B. Riley trimmed its CLF price target from $16 to $15 but kept a Buy rating, while the broader Street sits at Hold with an average target around $10.64. That gap between a cautious consensus and improving fundamentals is where sharp traders often find opportunity—on both the long and short side, depending on the tape.

The near-term setup in CLF revolves around whether the market starts to front-run the free cash flow story before it shows up in reported numbers. Cleveland-Cliffs is cleaning up non-core assets, extending maturities, and pushing every spare dollar toward leverage reduction, all while booking stronger pricing and shipments. As Tim Sykes likes to remind his trading community, “Patterns repeat, but only for those who study them obsessively and cut losses ruthlessly.” That message pairs with another core principle of disciplined trading: as millionaire penny stock trader and teacher Tim Sykes, says, “There is always another play around the corner; don’t chase just because you feel FOMO.”. CLF’s fundamental pattern is improving; traders now have to marry that story with price action, manage risk tightly, and let the chart confirm whether this turnaround has real momentum or is just another bear-market rally in steel.

This is stock news, not investment advice. Timothy Sykes News delivers real-time stock market news focused on key catalysts driving short-term price movements. Our content is tailored for active traders and investors seeking to capitalize on rapid price fluctuations, particularly in volatile sectors like penny stocks. Readers come to us for detailed coverage on earnings reports, mergers, FDA approvals, new contracts, and unusual trading volumes that can trigger significant short-term price action. Some users utilize our news to explain sudden stock movements, while others rely on it for diligent research into potential investment opportunities.

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The available research on day trading suggests that most active traders lose money. Fees and overtrading are major contributors to these losses.

A 2000 study called “Trading is Hazardous to Your Wealth: The Common Stock Investment Performance of Individual Investors” evaluated 66,465 U.S. households that held stocks from 1991 to 1996. The households that traded most averaged an 11.4% annual return during a period where the overall market gained 17.9%. These lower returns were attributed to overconfidence.

A 2014 paper (revised 2019) titled “Learning Fast or Slow?” analyzed the complete transaction history of the Taiwan Stock Exchange between 1992 and 2006. It looked at the ongoing performance of day traders in this sample, and found that 97% of day traders can expect to lose money from trading, and more than 90% of all day trading volume can be traced to investors who predictably lose money. Additionally, it tied the behavior of gamblers and drivers who get more speeding tickets to overtrading, and cited studies showing that legalized gambling has an inverse effect on trading volume.

A 2019 research study (revised 2020) called “Day Trading for a Living?” observed 19,646 Brazilian futures contract traders who started day trading from 2013 to 2015, and recorded two years of their trading activity. The study authors found that 97% of traders with more than 300 days actively trading lost money, and only 1.1% earned more than the Brazilian minimum wage ($16 USD per day). They hypothesized that the greater returns shown in previous studies did not differentiate between frequent day traders and those who traded rarely, and that more frequent trading activity decreases the chance of profitability.

These studies show the wide variance of the available data on day trading profitability. One thing that seems clear from the research is that most day traders lose money .

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Citations for Disclaimer

Barber, Brad M. and Odean, Terrance, Trading is Hazardous to Your Wealth: The Common Stock Investment Performance of Individual Investors. Available at SSRN: “Day Trading for a Living?”

Barber, Brad M. and Lee, Yi-Tsung and Liu, Yu-Jane and Odean, Terrance and Zhang, Ke, Learning Fast or Slow? (May 28, 2019). Forthcoming: Review of Asset Pricing Studies, Available at SSRN: “https://ssrn.com/abstract=2535636”

Chague, Fernando and De-Losso, Rodrigo and Giovannetti, Bruno, Day Trading for a Living? (June 11, 2020). Available at SSRN: “https://ssrn.com/abstract=3423101”