Coal stocks soar after Trump win

By Timothy Cama for The Hill.

Stock prices for coal mining companies soared in Wednesday morning trading after Donald Trump’s presidential election win.

Trump has pledged to bring the coal industry back from the brink and save coal miners’ jobs, after years of decline due to competition from cheap natural gas and President Obama’s policies.

“A Trump administration will focus on real environmental challenges, not the phony ones we’ve been looking at,” he said in a May speech.

Peabody Energy Corp., the world’s largest private coal mining company, led the pack in stock performance, rising by as much as 59 percent over Tuesday’s close in the OTC Markets Group market.

Peabody, like many of its fellow coal companies, was recently in dire financial straights, and declared bankruptcy earlier this year.

Cloud Peak Energy Inc. also saw some of its best stock performance in recent months, rising 17.6 percent over Tuesday.

Arch Coal Inc. was up nearly 6 percent in early trading, while Consol Energy Inc. saw a jump of as much as 9.2 percent in its price.

Coal companies based outside the United States saw some modest gains, with Anglo American plc and BHP Billiton Ltd up a few percentage points. Rio Tinto plc rose as much as 5 percent.

The National Mining Association applauded Trump on his victory Wednesday, saying it looks forward to Trump and Republican control of both chambers of Congress.

“Meeting the needs of the American people cannot be accomplished without a robust mining industry. And a robust mining industry is only possible with reasonable laws and regulations that balance costs with benefits in pursuit of realistic goals,” the group said in a statement, naming energy infrastructure and a “diverse” energy supply as some of its top policy goals.

Consulting firm ClearView Energy Partners said fossil fuels are likely to be a major winner under Trump’s energy and environmental policy.

“We view Trump’s victory as generally positive for fossil energy extraction, midstream infrastructure and downstream processing; generally neutral for renewable fuels, power and storage; negative for electric vehicles; and disruptive for climate policy and international oil company investment in Iran,” the firm said in a Wednesday note.