The dominant gold-stock benchmark is closing in on all-time-record highs. With the last one witnessed an astounding 14 years ago, the next will be a momentous sector milestone. New records will attract much attention to gold stocks, accelerating capital inflows to chase their strong upside momentum. The miners’ epic record fundamentals support way-higher stock prices, and they’ve way underperformed gold’s mighty bull.
The GDX VanEck Gold Miners ETF remains this sector’s leading yardstick and trading vehicle. Launched way back in mid-May 2006, it has parlayed its first-mover advantage into an insurmountable lead. GDX’s net assets midweek ran $16.8b, fully 10.1x larger than its next-biggest similar competitor! When almost any market participants monitor, analyze, or discuss gold stocks, their performance is viewed through the GDX lens.
Now reporting their best quarterly results ever by far thanks to Q2’25’s amazing record gold prices, gold stocks are enjoying a great week. This Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday GDX surged 4.7%, 2.8%, and 1.6%. That made for a hefty 9.4% three-day gain, wildly outperforming the metal driving gold miners’ enormous profits. Gold edged up a trivial 0.3% in that span, making for extreme GDX upside leverage of 33.7x!
Normally the major gold stocks dominating this benchmark ETF amplify material gold moves by 2x to 3x. That’s been the case year-to-date, with GDX soaring 69.2% as of Wednesday to gold’s awesome 28.4% gain for solid 2.4x upside. What really caught my attention this week is GDX achieved three new secular-high closes in a row, the first time that happened since mid-April when upside momentum was very strong.
This implies sector sentiment is really shifting bullish, attracting more speculators and investors to gold stocks. The more they rally, the more bullish financial-media coverage that generates really expanding interest. The more that attracts traders to deploy capital to chase these mounting gains, the more gold stocks rally. This powerful virtuous circle of buying begetting buying should soon catapult GDX to new records.
I don’t run super-long-term charts very often, but with GDX on record-high watch it is certainly appropriate now. This encompasses the vast majority of GDX’s entire history, starting with its first full calendar year of trading in 2007. This leading gold-stock benchmark has surged so close to new-record territory that all it will take to punch through is a handful of big up days. Getting there will accelerate gold stocks’ bullish shift.
Rather absurdly, this dominant gold-stock benchmark hasn’t achieved a record high since way back in early September 2011! A staggering 13.9 years ago, GDX crested at $66.63 capping a fantastic +307.0% bull run over 2.9 years! The major gold stocks more than quadrupled out of October 2008’s infamous stock panic. But this sector hasn’t come close to forging deeper into record territory again until this week.
That was an eternity ago, a very-different time with very-different markets. Think about what you were doing 14 years ago, how old your kids were then. Gold was naturally on a tear that quarter to drive gold stocks to record highs. The yellow metal achieved 17 all-time-high closes in Q3’11, hitting a highwater mark of $1,894. But the average gold price that quarter was merely $1,706, levels that seem quaint today.
My favorite metric for tracking gold miners’ fundamental performance is their quarterly implied unit profits. I’ve been computing this after every quarterly earnings season for 36 quarters in a row now, and plan to have the new Q2’25 work done next week to analyze in next Friday’s essay. This metric averages GDX’s 25-largest gold miners’ all-in sustaining costs each quarter, then subtracts them from quarterly average gold prices.
While I started this quarterly deep-research thread way back in Q2’16, that was still way after GDX’s last record highs. And all-in sustaining costs weren’t even introduced by the World Gold Council until about a couple years after GDX’s record topping in June 2013. So there is no way to calculate what GDX-top-25 AISCs would’ve been in Q3’11 for fundamental comparison. But we can make a reasonable estimate.
The large majority of all-in sustaining costs are comprised of traditional cash costs, which gold miners have always reported. In these past 36 quarters I’ve been painstakingly analyzing GDX-top-25 results, AISCs have averaged 1.39x cash costs. According to AI which is admittedly hallucination-prone on deep financial-market number-crunching, in Q3’11 ten major gold miners averaged cash costs running $694 per ounce.
That seems high based on our extensive dataset starting in Q2’16, about five years later. For a dozen quarters after that, GDX-top-25 cash costs averaged $611. But that AI number is the best we have, and reconstructing ancient-past gold-miner costs would be all but impossible. As these companies expand and merge, old quarterly reports of acquired companies are deleted. And GDX-top-25 composition changes.
But $694 multiplied by the last 9 years’ average AISC-to-cash-cost ratio of 1.39x yields a reasonable estimate of $962 per ounce when GDX last hit records. Subtract that from Q3’11’s quarterly-average gold price of $1,706, and that implies unit profits of $744 per ounce. Those were truly rich and fat back then with gold soaring, so gold-stock record highs were certainly fundamentally-justified. Today’s profits are far larger.
In the last four fully-reported quarters ending in Q1’25, the GDX-top-25 gold miners averaged implied unit profits of $1,099, $1,046, $1,207, and $1,470 per ounce! So one quarter ago the major gold miners were earning double their unit profits compared to during GDX’s last record highs. Even if that was adjusted for inflation, gold-miner earnings are still far higher now than they were when GDX last traded at better levels.
Back in late June 2025 nearly a month before gold miners’ current Q2’25 earnings season started, I wrote an essay forecasting it called Gold Miners Stack Records. Last quarter gold averaged an amazing record $3,285, far and away its highest quarter ever! Because most gold miners give AISC guidances and we have priceless extensive historical data, probable quarterly-average AISCs can be estimated ahead of results.
That essay analyzed why GDX-top-25 Q2’25 AISCs are likely to come in around $1,375. We’ll find out for sure next week, which I’m really excited to see after a few days of digging through quarterlies. But for now, that estimate suggests the major gold miners’ implied unit earnings last quarter ran way up near an epic record $1,910 per ounce! That’s a colossal 2.6x higher than Q3’11’s estimate at GDX’s last records!
So there’s zero doubt fundamentally gold stocks should be trading far above current levels, deep into new GDX-record territory. Many gold miners are also trading at cheap traditional valuations, with single-digit-to-teens trailing-twelve-month price-to-earnings ratios. It’s unbelievable how cheap gold miners are today compared to the lofty prevailing gold prices overwhelmingly driving their earnings, these stocks need to soar.
This Wednesday which was the data cutoff for this essay, GDX rallied another 1.6% to close at $57.39. That proved its best close in a whopping 13.5 years, since early February 2012! That was sure a different time for me, as our firstborn was still under a year old then. And we had barely found out my wife was pregnant with our second. How long 14 years is in life and markets hits like a sledgehammer reminiscing back.
At this Wednesday’s close, GDX was just 16.1% under besting early September 2011’s $66.63 all-time-record peak. That’s not far given gold stocks’ outsized volatility which helps make them attractive to traders. This Monday GDX soared to a 4.7% up day, it enjoyed a great 6.2% one as June dawned, and in mid-April as gold-stock bullishness mounted GDX saw a three-day streak of huge 8.4%, 4.8%, and 5.4% gains!
So this dominant gold-stock benchmark could surge into new-record territory within days, or leisurely get there within weeks. New all-time-record gold-stock highs aren’t far away in terms of time or distance, they are likely quite soon unless gold tanks for some unforeseen reason. As everyone is fascinated by new records, GDX’s imminent secular breakout will spawn lots of excitement really broadening sector awareness.
While any close over $66.63 is an all-time high, I’ve long preferred decisive technical breakouts for buy signals. Those are closes 1%+ beyond previous highwater marks, enough to quell worries about double-toppings. That comes when GDX exceeds $67.30 on close, a momentous day to celebrate. Maybe I’ll grill my ravenous now-middle-schoolers some fresh-ground burgers smothered in cheese and grilled bacon!
The fundamental case for much-higher gold-stock prices is ironclad, as next week’s essay on miners’ epic record Q2’25 results will again underscore. But so is the technical one. Again the major gold miners of GDX have tended to amplify material gold moves by 2x to 3x historically. Gold stocks must exhibit big upside leverage to their metal to compensate investors for their big additional risks on top of gold price trends.
From early October 2023 to mid-June 2025, so far gold has powered an extraordinary 88.6% higher in a mighty cyclical bull. Even more remarkable, this has also been a single uber-monster upleg without any 10%+ corrections! Gold hadn’t seen a 40%+ monster upleg since way back in mid-2020. Gold soared 40.0% in 4.6 months in that one, which GDX amplified a fantastic 3.4x skyrocketing to a great 134.1% gain!
Yet at best during gold’s latest cyclical bull into midweek, GDX has only powered 121.5% higher. While those are good absolute gains, relative to gold they’ve seriously lagged at very-poor 1.4x upside. To get back to its usual 2x-to-3x upside leverage, GDX’s bull run needs to extend to 177% to 266%! Translated into GDX prices, that runs from $71.81 to $94.77. Those are another 25% to 65% higher from midweek levels!
So gold stocks still have lots of room to run technically. As I expected back in late June when I wrote that Q2’25-earnings-preview essay, their epic record results are attracting institutional investors. Their buying is driving outsized gold-stock outperformance. Typically the seasonally-weak summer doldrums ensnare gold and thus miners’ stocks. Gold tends to drift lower into late June, then start recovering in its autumn rally.
This normal seasonal pattern is mostly playing out this year, with gold up 2.3% summer-to-date midweek. That would support 4.7%-to-7.0% GDX gains at 2x to 3x. But amazingly this gold-stock yardstick surged a big 13.4% in that same span for amazing 5.7x leverage! Huge gold-stock outperformance like this is a telltale sign traders are increasingly returning as sector bullishness mounts. And buying begets buying.
So it’s hard to imagine GDX not surging over that decisive breakout to new all-time highs very soon here. The only thing that could derail it is gold plunging, but that’s not likely in the cards. Global gold demand remains strong, American stock investors are increasingly chasing gold’s mighty cyclical bull, and gold-futures speculators still have lots of room to pile in with hyper-leveraged long contracts amplifying gold’s gains.
And traders love seeing new record highs, especially all-time ones. They love rushing in to chase strong upside momentum, which usually extends record breakouts deep into new-record territory. Coverage of gold stocks on mainstream financial media will soar as GDX achieves all-time records, and it will prove overwhelmingly-bullish. Gold stocks have real potential to surge dramatically after GDX breaks out.
So it’s not too late to get deployed in great gold miners, although that window is narrowing. We’ve long specialized in fundamentally-superior smaller mid-tier and junior gold stocks, which even well outperform the majors dominating GDX. They are better able to consistently grow their production from smaller bases, and often have lower mining costs. They are the sweet spot for gold-stock upside during gold bull runs.
Case in point in 2024 GDX dreadfully underperformed gold’s big +27.2% year, rallying a dismal 9.4%. Yet in our subscription newsletters specializing in gold-stock trading for decades, our 84 mostly-gold-stock trades last year averaged annualized realized gains of +43.1%! In the first half of 2025, we realized another 34 stock trades averaging similar +40.7% annualized gains. Handpicked smaller gold miners outperform.
After hitting crazy-overbought extremes in mid-April, gold needed to correct. So back then we ratcheted up stop losses on our extensive gold-stock trades to maximize our realized gains. But since late June, we’ve been refilling our newsletter trading books with great fundamentally-superior mid-tiers and juniors. Their performance should be outstanding as GDX forges into new-record territory, and it’s not too late to buy in.
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The bottom line is GDX is on record-high watch. Well outperforming gold this summer, this dominant gold-stock benchmark is within striking distance of all-time-record highs. That will be a momentous event really fueling bullish sentiment, as GDX’s last record came a staggering 14 years ago. So new records will fuel exploding bullish financial-media coverage and trader interest, motivating them to flood in and chase.
The gold miners’ epic record fundamentals support way-higher gold-stock levels, as their phenomenal Q2’25 results are reinforcing. And technically gold stocks remain way under where they should be trading based on their historical leverage to gold. So there’s massive room for them to surge much higher as new GDX records stoke excitement, bullishness, and chasing. Getting deployed before that breakout is prudent.
Adam Hamilton, CPA
August 8, 2025
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