James River Coal Company (JRCC) is one of the coal companies in US and it mines, processes and sells bituminuos, steam and industrial grade coal through multiple subsidaries.
Its peer companies are Peabody Energy Corporation (BTU), Alpha Natural Resources(MEE), Arch Coal Inc (ARC) and Patriot Coal Company (PCX).
In genral all these coal companies have witnessed a significant decline in last 3 months. On July 26th 2011, JRCC was trading above $20 per share after hitting its 52 week high of $27.05 on Jan 12th, 2011. The current price is between $5 and $6 and still heading downwards.
Correlation Effect:
I see a strong correlation between Oil industry and Coal industry; below graph is between JRCC and the electronically traded fund (ETF) – Direxion Daily Energy Bull 3X Shares (NYSE: ERX). ETF of oil is good reflection of oil price history and the oil sector companies.
In last 3 months (Jul’11 through Oct 3rd,11), both the stocks ERX and JRCC lost their stock price more than 60%. [Below graphs are taken from www.google.com/finance]
As seen in above chart, whenever oil ETF fell, JRCC followed the similar pattern. Now interesting correlation between Oil industry and the Finance Industry. Considering the news on Greece to get into credit default; finance industry across the world is taking a nose dip in stock price. I consider ETF- Direxion Daily Finance. Bull 3X Shares (NYSE: FAS) as a index to measure finance sector stock price movement.

ERX and FAS - 6 months (Apr-Oct 2011) stock price chart
Both the stocks i.e. ERX and FAS dropped their stock price by more than 68% in last 6 months as shown above.
Bottom line- As long as Greece issue stays in the stock market cloud, financial stocks will continue to get hammered and now China’s slow growth is also getting into the mix of economy slowdown. And as we saw in the graphs, weak financial sector will keep the Oil sector also down and hence the coal sector. Because when oil get cheaper, consumer by oil then the coal and that triggers low demand for coal and hence drop in the stock price.