Timna TannersBank of America
Merrill Lynch		Last ranked in 2010, when she was at UBS, Timna Tanners returns to the roster in second place — a personal best for the analyst, who joined Bank of America Merrill Lynch in May 2011. The following month she relaunched coverage of steel producers with a prescient underperform on Pittsburgh’s U.S. Steel Corp., at $42.15, on an oversupply of domestic flat-rolled steel, and a buy on Los Angeles–based Reliance Steel & Aluminum Co., at $46.41, partly owing to the excess cash on its balance sheet. U.S. Steel shares plunged 53.9 percent, to $19.45, while those of Reliance advanced 10.8 percent, to $51.43, through August 2012. During the same period the sector declined 29.1 percent. Tanners, who according to one client is “both timely and insightful,” follows 19 stocks and currently favors Nucor Corp., because of the Charlotte, North Carolina–based concern’s expanding use of lower-priced natural gas at its steel mills.