The price of gold performed poorly last week, dropping from Tuesday’s high of $1,330 per ounce, to a low of $1,261 per ounce on Friday morning. Gold for immediate delivery ended the week down by 3.3%, at $1,272 per ounce.
Of course, the only practical way for most private investors to invest in gold is through exchange-traded funds. The largest gold ETF, the $38bn SPDR Gold Trust (NYSE: GLD.US), ended last week down 3.6% at $122.60, while London-listed Gold Bullion Securities (LSE: GBS) ended the week down 3.2% at $123.05. So far this year, shareholders of Gold Bullion Securities have seen the value of their holdings fall by 23.9%, while the value of SPDR Gold Trust shares has fallen by 24.9%.
Against this difficult backdrop, a number of gold mining shares made solid gains last week:
Patagonia Gold (LSE: PGD) ended the week up by 10.9% at 12.8p. The firm, which is in the process of ramping up production at its Lomada de Leiva gold project in Argentina, has not released any news since its half-yearly report in September, but the firm’s Chairman and Finance Director recently purchased almost £1m worth of shares in the firm, which also benefits from strong investor support through its inclusion in the popular Market Vectors Junior Gold Miners ETF, which owns almost 5% of Patagonia Gold.
Centamin (LSE: CEY) closed up 1.3% to 45.6p on Friday last week, after having touched a high of 47p early on Friday morning. The firm’s gold production was 84,757 ounces during the third quarter, a 39% increase on the same period in 2012, according to figures published last week, although production was down by 9% on the second quarter of 2013. The firm is now confident of exceeding its full-year 2013 guidance of 320,000 ounces, despite likely disruption during the fourth quarter as it begins to commission stage four of its plant expansion programme.
SolGold (LSE: SOLG) gained 5.0% to 8.7p last week after releasing preliminary assay results showing more than 200m of copper-gold mineralisation, at up to 1g/t of gold and 0.5% copper, at the Alpala prospect within the SolGold’s Cascabel Project, in Northern Ecuador.