Miners pounded by gold rout

A three percent drop in the price of gold to the mid $1,160s/oz last week – lows not seen in years – translated into an especially painful mow-down of gold equities, majors and juniors alike.

A quick inspection of five of the top gold miners shows that as a group they were down 12%, on average, from market close Wednesday to Friday.

That was about three times the movement in the price of gold and showed more exaggeration, gold-vs.-equities, than usual, suggesting investors hit the panic button in selling their gold stock.

Kinross Gold stands out. It lost 20% last week, piling on an abysmal performance this year. Its share price is down nearly 50% in 2014.

Among the top two gold miners Barrick fared better than Goldcorp in the gold rout last week. Barrick and Goldcorp’s share prices fell 7% and 12% respectively.

But on the year Goldcorp’s share price has been far more resilient. With gold down about 3% on the year, it has lost about 8% of its share price value.

Barrick is down a whopping 28%.

Indeed, despite the fact Goldcorp produces far less gold than Barrick, its lesser debt load, and cost and growth profile, have plumped up its market valuation beyond the #1 gold miner this year.

Now like the majors many of the top gold juniors – companies with fairly sizeable gold deposits at an advanced stage – also bombed last week on heavy volumes.

The average share price losses of nine leading gold juniors was 15% Wednesday to Friday last week.

Roxgold and Romarco Minerals were most notable among losers, down 27% and 22% respectively.

Yet some context here is worth noting.

These two junior names were also the two in the group that were still up overall on the year, Romarco by 50% and Roxgold by 13%.

Among the worst performances was True Gold’s, down 20% late last week and 50% on the year.

Overall, however, junior gold developers in view here have fared better than the majors in 2014. Indeed, they were near even on the year, despite the recent gold rout. Miners pounded by gold rout.