American stock markets have been retreating prior to the upcoming election. The S&P is down close to 2% for the week while Nasdaq eased 2.8%. European stock markets were dragged along in a losing streak.
Precious metals have been firming, with gold up 2.3% for the week and regaining $1300. On Friday gold closed at $1304. Even some more enthusiasm for silver, gaining 3.84% over the week to $18.41. The PGMs lag with a 1.94% weekly gain for Pt (unable to hold on to a $1000/Oz intraday high) closing at $996 and Pd adding less than 1% to $625. Precious metal gains are only half convincing due to the greenback weakening.
The HUI index added 5% last week, making the HUI/Gold ratio firm little to 0.167. The usual updates have been done on the
gold miner pulse blog page. Despite the HUI advancing, it stays beneath its regression line relative to gold: residuals remain negative. Mining investors are not overwhelmed by precious metals firming: is gold advancing 'for the wrong reasons?'. Read: because of uncertainty on the outcome of the US presidential election result?
All benchmark ETF's advance, but only GDX (+5.29%) beats the HUI, while GDXJ almost catches up. SIL lags and GOEX adds less than 2% over the week. With a 2.61% advance, our
Contributor driven Explorer and Junior Miner spreadsheet is not among the best in class. Yet with most quotes in CAD this is hardly surprising. We cut our long term loss to a fractional 0.59%. There are 12 picks advancing over the week against 7 declining. Sandstorm gold made it above break-even, bringing us to 10 long term advances against 9 long term declines. Weekly advances were led by Continental Gold (+12%) but (nano-cap) prospect generator Miranda Gold (-11%) is the major drag on the list.
You notice that our cap weighed result (+14.9%) dwarfs the overall average: nice long term gains on the few mid-caps on the list, such as BTG, MAG silver and Pretium Res boost the cap weighed result. On the other hand, the poor performance on micro-caps such as Argonaut Gold, Pilot Gold and Timmin's Gold weighs more on the blunt average performance.
