Gold Stocks Take Off on Fed Surprise

Gold has been in a slump the last year. And gold stocks have fallen even further.

However, today’s surprise announcement that the Fed will delay tapering at least another month was a boon for gold stocks. A number of them took off after the 2:00 announcement, many of them rising more than 10% in less than two hours.

Here were some of the day’s top performing gold stocks:

  • Barrick Gold (ABX): +10%
  • Gold Fields (GFI): +11.7%
  • Royal Gold (RGLD): 10.2%
  • New Gold (NGD): +13%
  • Harmony Gold Mining (HMY): +15%
  • Sandstorm Gold (SAND): +10.2%

You get the point. Gold stocks had a really good day. Whether they can sustain it will depend on how where gold prices go in the coming months.

Gold has started to break out of its funk in the last few months, rising from a low of around $1,200 an ounce in early July to $1,365 per ounce as of this writing. Still, that’s a far cry from the record high of $1,900 per ounce we saw gold hit two years ago almost to the day.

As for gold miners, they’ve been beaten down with such authority the last two years – GDX had fallen 59% in the last 24 months entering the day – the most of the stocks are cheap.

Fed tapering or no Fed tapering, however, that doesn’t make gold stocks any less risky.

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