Alcoa's Woes And Its Indirect Ties To The Bin

In the Yahoo! Finance story about Alcoa's reported 2Q loss, mention was made of "slumping orders from key customers in the aerospace, automotive and construction industries." Aerospace and defense is one industry whose membership in the Bin is close to growing. As of the end of May, the only Bin stocks in that industry were Embraer, which subsequently left because the P/E cutoff sunk below its own, and Honeywell. The latter company is still in the Bin.

Two weeks ago, Barnes Group arrived. This stock, like Honeywell and (to a lesser extent) Embraer, haven't been doing all that well this past month. In their price action, they resemble the capital-goods stocks. However, the industry itself may be moving to out-of-favor status. There's a Democratic administration and Congress in D.C. now; similar governments have tended to be chary about defense spending. There could be more Aerospace and Defense stocks being moved to the Low P/E Bin in the near future, even if a political analyst would point to heath-care-related stocks as more obvious candidates.

I should note that the Low P/E Bin hasn't welcomed in any construction-industry stocks as yet. Nor have there been any auto stocks, as the only one that's still publicly traded doesn't have any E.