Canadian gold and silver miner performance: an update

Back in November 2010 as I started monitoring the Canadian gold and silver miner performance, I used the mining stocks covered by the GoldMinerPulse database. This source contains resource and reserve information on nearly 100 gold or silver miners, explorers and developers. It has become subscription based from this year onward: as such our 'miner universe' will gradually diverge.

Gold miner bear market starting its fifth year

As we start a new year, it's time to make an update on the situation of gold and silver miners, using the approach you also find in the 'gold miner pulse' blog page and/or the miner performance page. Those pages have been updated with fresh information as of Dec 31st, 2015.
Several more detailed articles, using a similar approach, have been published (a good read for the more long term perspective):

1. Miners relative to precious metals: a tactical approach; (July 2, 2012)
2. Miners relative to precious metals: An update on 2012 (Jan 13, 2013)
3. Anatomy of a gold miner bear market (Dec 30, 2013)
4. Three year slide of precious metal miners (Dec 31, 2014)

During 2011-13 and even over the long haul, the relative performance of mining majors to the precious metals they produce had been disappointing for major gold miners, even while the metals were in a solid uptrend.  See: Gold miners: three decades for naught or Decades of underperformance

This blog article has a time perspective covering years or decades, but is also monitoring whether the trends observed are persisting.

Miners boosted

American stock markets rallied towards the Friday close, the late recovery however didn't make up for prior losses culminating in the Thursday slide.

Precious metals retreating push miners down the cliff

By mid October miner sentiment had improved as gold broke above $1180, but there's little left of that optimism. With gold closing October at $1141.7, down 1.9% over the week, the yellow metal has given back about half of its October gains.  Silver at $15.535 (-1.7%) doesn't do much better. The white metal only briefly regained $16 by mid October.

Sluggish East-Asian economies keep the lid on precious metals

From September until the end of the year is repeated over and over to be the seasonally strongest period of the year for precious metals. Such statistics however are averages and calculated standard errors are considerable. Yet we now face the fifth consecutive year with precious metals unable to uphold any gain during autumn. A worsening economic outlook for East-Asian economies keeps the lid on precious metals.

Elite miners and explorers ... or what's left of them

Since almost five years, I've been monitoring how the precious metal miners and explorers covered in the Gold Miner Pulse database fluctuate up and more often down. From a majority of gains over losses few months after the start in Nov 2010, we have evolved to only five long term gains left.

The bear market logic for gold miners: Continuation and Analysis

The summer slump for precious metals has turned into a nightmare, with gold breaking below $1100, platinum into the triple digits and silver well below $15. While the July slide is pretty bad, what makes it worse is precious metals setting fresh multi-year lows.

Review of gold price volatility

You find the newest article on this subject at: Review of Gold Price Volatility: 1973-2017

It’s often heard that gold takes the staircase up, but the elevator down. A gold rally would then consist in a gradual process of relatively small but consistent daily upward moves. The gold cartel (bullion banks and investment banks, backed by the FED) would not allow gold to rally over 2% daily.

Once ignited, swoons in precious metals are thought to aggravate by forced liquidation of future long positions and the redemption of leveraged products and bullion ETF’s...

All of this is a mixture of facts and myths, causes and consequences, hidden motives and secrecy, misinformation, manipulation and opportunism. While I can do very little about most of those, I will try to clarify some of the facts in order to eliminate a few of the myths.

Gold and the miners: identifying the bear market logic

Irrespective whether the latest precious metal recovery sets off a miners rally or is just another dead cat bounce, it 's important recognizing the underlying logic in the trends of gold miners (the HUI index) relative to gold.

Global mine production of precious metals

On April 27, 2016 a new article on this subject was published:
Worldwide mine production of Gold and Silver
A commonly stated explanation for low (or high) precious metal prices is that "low prices are the cure for low prices".