Uranium Stocks Surge Despite Slow Uranium Contract Trading

Stock Tickers: USU, NMX, CCJ, EMU, URRE, URZ

This morning, if it is a stock related to uranium then it is probably up.  This is in the face of what is a very slow launch of uranium contract trading on NYMEX (NMX-NYSE) that we alerted last Friday.

USEC Inc. (USU-NYSE) is trading up 5% more at $23.94 and the stock earlier today traded a dime above the old yearly high of $24.34.  This is actually a multi-year high that may in fact be an all-time high.

Cameco (CCJ-NYSE) is also up 2% to $50.68 today.  If you listened to their conference call last week you would scratch your head over this.  Almost every single analyst that asked questions after the update to the company’s Cigar Lake floode was vicious and lashing.  The company didn’t really address the concerns from how it sounded.

Cramer’s pick, Energy Metals Corp. (EMU-NYSE) is trading up more than 5% on the day.  Uranium Resources (URRE-NASDAQ/OTC) posted a 300% revenue gain to $4.6 million.  This is a tiny number on a microcap stock, but those are things that swing traders and metals speculators look for.  Shares are up almost 4% to $9.90.  Even the small uranium wild catting play, Uranerz Energy (URZ-AMEX) is up 1% today.

This all flies in the face of what has been a very slow start to the Nymex uranium contract trading.  According to the website at Nymex, the open interest was a whopping 37 contracts since the contract debuted on Monday.  The large uranium miners and processors said they were going to stay on the sidelines for a while to see what would happen and how the contracts would be received.  Based on that open interest it doesn’t look like the big layers are coming in to trade the contract any time soon.

Jon C. Ogg
May 11, 2007

Jon Ogg can be reached at [email protected]; he does not own securities in the companies he covers.