We recently published a list of 10 Stocks Defy Monday’s Market Optimism. In this article, we are going to take a look at where Cleveland-Cliffs Inc. (NYSE:CLF) stands against other stocks that defy Monday’s market optimism.

US shares kicked off Monday’s trading with a bounceback from last week’s pessimistic sentiment, as economies took a pause from their tariff war.

Additionally, investors breathed a sigh of relief on the February retail sales report which came in not as bad as feared.

According to the latest figures, retail sales rose 0.2 percent, albeit below the 0.6 percent as expected by analysts. Excluding autos, sales are up by 0.3 percent, in line with economists’ expectations.

Following the news, the Dow Jones clocked in a 0.85-percent gain, followed by the S&P 500 with 0.64 percent, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq with 0.31 percent.

Meanwhile, 10 companies bucked a wider optimistic sentiment over a flurry of negative corporate news that weighed down on their shares. In this article, we have listed Monday’s 10 worst performers and detailed the reasons behind their drop.

To come up with the list, we considered only the stocks with $2 billion market capitalization and $5 million in trading volume.

A welder in a hardhat soldering steel plates to a blueprint plan.

Cleveland-Cliffs Inc. (NYSE:CLF)

Cleveland-Cliffs dropped its share prices by 2.31 percent on Monday to finish at $10.15 each as investors continued to digest news of legal proceedings involving the company over allegations that it sabotaged US Steel and Japan-based Nippon Steel’s merger deal.

In a federal court last week, lawyers for US Steel (NYSE:X) accused CLF and United Steelworkers union leadership of conspiring to sabotage what would have been a merger between X and Nippon.

According to the report, the allegations constituted a deliberate act to dominate the steel market. Both X and Nippon sued CLF, its CEO, and the union president.

In January this year, former president Joe Biden blocked the potential merger, saying that the steel producers and the American steelworkers “are the backbone of our nation.”

However, a report by Reuters said that President Donald Trump may now allow Nippon to acquire X, as the administration filed a motion to extend two deadlines in a lawsuit against a US national security panel to give the government more time to wrap up merger talks with the firms.

Trump said last month that he would not mind if Nippon acquires a minority stake in X.

Overall, CLF ranks 10th on our list of stocks that defy Monday’s market optimism. While we acknowledge the potential of CLF as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that some AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns and doing so within a shorter time frame. If you are looking for an AI stock that is as promising as CLF but trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.

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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.