Tuesday, March 25, 2014

The Leveraged Effects of the Recent Decline in Bullion Prices On the Shares of the Largest Miners (GDX; NUGT; DUST)

From Mineweb:

How hard top gold miners fell since the metal's turn
We take a look at how far gold miner share prices fell over the past 10 days since gold dropped six percent.  
HALIFAX, NS (MINEWEB) - 
Over the past 10 days the spot price of gold has fallen about six percent from about $1,385 an ounce March 14 to about $1,311 an ounce March 24.

But the gold equities, as you would expect, have fared far worse. Gold miners typically magnify moves in the price of gold - either way it goes.

They did on the way up, and now, as gold pulls off recent highs, their shareprices are taking a pounding.
How badly?...MORE
10 DAYS, 10 GOLD MINERS: SHARE PERFORMANCE

Shareprice change - 10 days 3/14/2014 3/24/2014 Marketcap ($B)
Barrick -10.52% $23.19 $20.75 C$24
Goldcorp -10.14% $31.84 $28.61 C$23
Newmont -8.75% $26.18 $23.89 US$12
Newcrest -15.29% $12.10 $10.25 US$8
Yamana -13.30% $11.73 $10.17 C$8
Randgold -8.96% $83.66 $76.16 US$7
AngloGold -11.88% $19.36 $17.06 US$7
Agnico Eagle -10.10% $38.41 $34.53 USC$6
Kinross -11.30% $5.75 $5.10 C$5
Eldorado -17.36% $8.12 $6.71 C$5
Average -11.76%


Median -10.91%



Just for grins and giggles I included in the headline the symbols of a couple wild wee beasties: The Direxion Daily Gold Miners Bull and Bear triple leveraged ETF's whose prices behaved about as one might have expected when derivative leveraging is applied to operating leverage, bear (DUST) up 30% or so and the bull (NUGT) down about the same:

Chart forDirexion Daily Gold Miners Bear 3X Shrs (DUST)