ETF Spotlight: Market Vectors Gold Miners (GDX)
September 29th at 2:00pm by Tom Lydon
ETF Spotlight on Market Vectors Gold Miners (NYSEArca: GDX), part of a weekly series.
Assets: $6.9 billion
Objective: Tracks the NYSE Arca Gold Miners Index
Holdings: Some of the top companies in the fund are the world’s largest gold mining corporations, including Barrick Gold , Goldcorp, Newmont Mining and Anglogold.
What You Should Know
- As gold prices have soared, so have the assets in GDX; in the last year, assets have risen 53%
- The majority of the fund’s 31 holdings are large-cap corporations, which makes up 83.9% of the holdings; another 12% of the fund is mid-caps and 4% is small-caps.
- Most of the fund’s holdings are Canadian corporations, which make up 60%; the United States accounts for 14% and South Africa is 13.2%.
- A small portion of GDX – 7.5%, to be exact – is silver miners.
The Latest News
- The higher gold’s price goes, so will the profit margins of the corporations that mine the metal; it costs around $250 to extract an ounce of gold. [Time to Short Gold With ETFs?]
- Equity ETFs are an alternative to gold ETFs that own futures or hold the metal.
- The benefits include: exposure to the expertise of mining company CEOs, god miner ETFs don’t experience the same price swings that gold might. [Gold ETFs Shine On.]
- Gold these days is serving a number of benefits: inflation hedge, store of value and safe-haven protection.
