Deeper Analysis

More on Friday, April 7, 2023. Go to the Van Eck site for the contents of their miner funds, GDX and GDXJ.

I have the GDX fund holdings for you here: https://www.vaneck.com/us/en/investments/gold-miners-etf-gdx/holdings/

Compare what’s in it with what I wrote up earlier today. Many fine looking issues are inside GDX, and its relative price movement is ahead of most of the individual miners. I’d be just as happy to buy more GDX as to try to pick individual mining winners.

Here’s what’s in GDX, in order by size: NEM, GOLD, FNV, AEM, WPM, GFI, AU, RGLD, PAAS, KGC, AGI and BTG in the very same order as their market cap! This is truly the ETF of the major miners! There’s a total of 48 issues in the fund, BUT these 12 just listed comprise 62.2% of the funds invested assets. There are some 4 other truly large-cap foreign issues in here too, that I don’t have in my database and can’t chart, that take the total assets in large miners past 77% of the fund. That leaves some 32 other mining stocks that exist within the fund at truly tiny pieces of it. GDX is a strong buy in my book!

What about GDXJ then? That list is here: https://www.vaneck.com/us/en/investments/junior-gold-miners-etf-gdxj/holdings/

It does a very similar thing! Without including the top 11 large cap miners, it begins at number 12 on the list by market cap, PAAS, and then cap-weights the rest of the way down the list to hold some 55 issues, 7 more than GDX, but starting at PAAS, number 12 on the list, and goes further down, deeper into the list.

See what this means, since GDXJ does not hold the top 11 by market cap, and begins at PAAS as its top holding, it does not hold those issues that make up 66% or some 2/3rds of GDX. These are therefore genuinely different mining funds, as they are each market cap weighted, and GDX is predominately filled with the Gorillas in the sector, while GDXJ cuts off the BIG top 11, and is truly filled with many more of the genuinely smaller cap stocks in the group! It is also doing just fine, and I would rate GDXJ a buy in my book as well, and if things should commence to move as I think they might, it would be a strong buy, and go on to likely outperform GDX!

Since I’ve so little time to give to this blog… and since I do track GLD, and own GDX… I see NO reason why I couldn’t write more often, and just post what I can see on GLD and GDX.

Now, I do receive the king of mining letters, and they do engage in a great deal of research and recommend a select list of only a few of all the miners they track… It might make better sense to look deeper into it, and incorporate their efforts into my own research, and hybridize this thing…. Hmmm…

Harold