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.
Read the ETF Spotlight archives.
The opinions and forecasts expressed herein are solely those of Tom Lydon, and may not actually come to pass. Information on this site should not be used or construed as an offer to sell, a solicitation of an offer to buy, or a recommendation for any product.