Perhaps lured by compelling valuations or simply the theory, however flawed, that mining stocks cannot fall much further, investors have poured $2.3 billion in GDX this year. That is nearly a third of the ETF’s current assets under management tally of $7.1 billion. In just the past week, GDX has attracted almost $213 million, according to Index Universe.
GDX is also not richly valued relative to the S&P 500 (^GSPC). The ETF has a trailing 12-month P/E of 16.3 and a trailing 12-month price-to-book ratio of 1.08, according to Market Vectors data. However, the ETF’s three-year standard deviation is nearly 30% with a Sharpe ratio of -0.8.
Market Vectors Gold Miners ETF
ETF Trends editorial team contributed to this post. Tom Lydon’s clients own shares of GLD.