Key Points
- Gold market gaining confidence
- Australian Gold Producers well placed
- Paradigm Gold Portfolio was up 75.5% in 13 months to 31 Dec
- Kalgoorlie gold region being reinvigorated
- 2016 should see further Australian gold development resurgence
- Long term trends may be indicating end of deflationary times
The strong performances of key ASX-listed Australian domestic gold producers have been a key feature of Dawes Points' views of the world. Upbeat reports on production, cost reductions, earnings, cash and dividends assisting a +75% untraded weighted portfolio gain have insulated many clients from the external volatility in most other market sectors. Exploration results have also helped for some companies.
These gains in Australia have encouraged Dawes Points to consider that the actions in the global gold, gold equities, commodities and commodities equities will be following those in Australia sooner or later in the new year of 2016.
The Paradigm ASX 300 Gold Index share of All Ords value turnover graphic has been of great assistance in showing that the relevance of Gold Stocks was recovering and that indeed a major turning point was coming about after a very long decline.
Similar but still nascent changes seem to be underway in ASX Small Resources and also in the XMM, with prices still falling but volumes and market share increasing. All good tentative signs.
The Dawes Points 3 December 2014 untraded gold stock portfolio provided a 73.6% return for 13 months to 31 December plus almost 2% in dividends.
Here is the proof.
Great gains by overweighted leaders Northern Star and Evolution together with half weighted emerging companies Blackham, Saracen and Gold Road gave the portfolio most of the performance and it outperformed the ASX Gold Index by about 20 % points in value and about 0.5% in yield.
It is easy to say that the local gold sector has done well because of the weaker A$ but the A$ gold price has been around A$1,500/oz for the past five years. The recent moves above A$1,600/oz and last week's surge to A$1,588 will certainly help sentiment.
The gold price at A$1,500/oz has made good earnings for many companies and I expect that the Dec Half of 2015 will bring even more gold production growth, lower operating costs and higher earnings.
Expect many gold producers this month to put out early advice of good production stats ahead of the formal quarterlies.
But it is not just the A$ gold price that has made these good market performances.
Real effort, ingenuity and investment is involved in this local industry and here is where the industry is going with the production growth results very clear in WA which has consistently produced 65-70% of Australia's mined gold.
The longer term appears robust for all Australia.
In assessing the Gold Sector Portfolio, emphasis was placed on the S&P ASX 300 Gold Index to ensure investors were looking at visibility and liquidity for most chosen stocks.
However, since the ASX sold its index business to S&P the resources market has never been quite the same. The Gold Index was discarded and not resuscitated until about 2005 and then was backdated.
The actual XGD Index was recently critically reviewed by Dawes Points to analyse its effectiveness.
This index has been found to be an appalling collection of gold, non-gold, local and foreign listed stocks that gives no real reflection on the activity in the Australian gold industry of the past decade.
So coming to the real action in the ASX Gold Index today we have a tale of two sub sectors:-
Domestic gold producers; and locally domiciled companies with offshore gold production.
The ASX 300 Gold Index currently has 22 stocks. Ten are gold-only plays domiciled in Australia and operating mostly Australian gold mines. Eight are Australian domiciled and operate mines offshore. Two are foreign domiciled and have all or mostly foreign gold mining operations. One is a diversified miner with local gold production and one is a diamond mine developer.
Look at this.
First of all, note the June 2013 low that I have often mentioned! An unweighted index of up to ten Australian local producers is up 165% since that low.
The eight offshore producers are down exactly 50%. The Index itself is up just 28%.
Where did you want to be in this index? Clearly with Australian gold companies producing locally.
The other four stocks in this 24 stock universe have little or no relationship with the Australian Gold Index.
What a misallocation of resources. What would be the interest in ASX gold stocks be if the ASX Gold Index actually reflected these strong gains and the activity in the Australian gold industry itself!
ASX investors should be able to invest in confidence in Australian companies involved in the gold industry.
Australia is the second largest producer of gold, after China, and the opportunities should be large and many. A decade ago, almost two thirds of Australia's gold production was owned by overseas domiciled gold companies. Recently, substantial gold production assets have come back to Australia through sell downs and acquisition by Northern Star, Evolution and MetalsX.
Everyone should be investing in this production growth and not, as suggested by the ASX 300 Gold Index, in some foreign domiciled offshore producer and certainly not in an offshore uranium prospect. Or in a coal miner, iron ore producer, or a gas company.
Actually, the story of these Australian gold producers gets better.
These terrific ten Australian gold producers make up over 90% of the XGD turnover and as noted above this is now back up to around 2% of All Ords turnover.
Makes the current makeup of the XGD Index look silly.
Well, my 2016 portfolio will still emphasise most of these top ten (eight actually) with a few more that should soon come into the XGD:-
Only three of the offshore producers make the grade for the portfolio.
I have added some emerging stars to give us the Dawes Points 2016 Gold Stock Portfolio for a A$100,000 portfolio. $40% in the larger stocks, 30% in mid caps, 20% in growth opportunities and 10% in minnows.
I am taking the 31 Dec as the start date so let's follow the performance over the year and compare it with the 2015 Portfolio.
I would like to refer to two other minnows that wouldn't fit in the Gold Portfolio but could provide some excitement in 2016.
Mustang Resources (MUS.ASX) has some very high quality projects in Mozambique that include rubies and diamonds.
Alt Resources (ARS.ASX) is a recently listed explorer with an outstanding copper porphyry target near Cooma in the Snowy Mountains on NSW.
The Big Picture
The current sell-offs in commodity and equity markets continue the bearish trend of the past few years and we all are experiencing tough times outside these local gold stocks.
But these gold stocks are showing that not all is dismal and pessimistic.
The big picture for gold remains that market sentiment remains poor and most professional investors have been out and probably short since the highs in 2011. We have now had over four years of declining US$ gold prices and all manner of uptrends have been broken. However, the graphic below shows US$ gold is almost bouncing off the US$1032 high of the GFC in March 2008. This may be very important. The momentum and sentiment indicators are good enough for the gold price to have completed most of its decline and to bounce and renew the bull market.
Long Term Gold Price from 1980.
The US Fed has begun its interest rate hikes as that economy strengthens. The evidence is clear that this is a sub normal recovery but the deleveraging has been substantial at personal and government levels and even the US Budget Deficit seems to now be 40% lower than just a few years ago. Savings rates around the world have improved balance sheets everywhere. The US$18trillion debt is still there but the bond market is still signalling that higher yields are in store over the next few years.
Rising bond yields after such an extended period of easy money will be reinforcing the probabilities of the end to the deflationary days and a pick up in inflation.
Over US$90trillion of capital is tied up in government and corporate bonds. This is a massive source of capital and when coupled with the global cash levels, there should be strong flows of capital out of cash and bonds to gold when sentiment changes.
US 10 Year Bond Prices - Weekly
The market for gold is now driven by the Love Trade for jewellery in India and China and is likely to do so for quite some time.
From this graphic it is easy to see that most of the world's 170,000 tonnes of gold is held as jewellery and demand for gold into India is insatiable.
China in 2015 according to Koos Jansen at Bullion Star had another record year of imports (~1,200tpa) and domestic withdrawals (2,405t ytd) through the Shanghai Gold Exchange.
World mine production is only about 3100t so between them China and India absorb all mine production.
Coin demand remains robust and silver coins mint production in North America has maintained the very high levels of 2013 and 2014 to meet this strong demand.
This Supply and Demand for Gold for the Next Ten Years strongly suggests a tight market for gold will exist for quite some time.
You will be familiar with graphics of the Philadelphia Gold Index (XAU) that is showing an index level that is almost as low as that at the US$248/oz low in 2000.
My reading of this indicates we are near the lows in these major North American gold stocks and if the market is completing the Wave 2 correction then the upside should be strong and should follow what we have already seen in the Australian Gold Production Sector above.
The market is currently all about sentiment and the sentiment has not yet turned favourably towards gold but that change cannot be too far away now and the response could be rapid.
This strong view for North American gold stocks is supported by the very long term graphic for the Barron's Gold Mining Index which goes back to 1940.
An excellent long term uptrend is matching support of 2000 and is also about the same as highs in 1969!
Readers will probably be also familiar with the XAU vs the S&P500 whereby gold stocks there have fallen 90% against the S&P500.
We can look again at the S&P500 against all commodities (CRB Index) and extreme is the only word that can apply!
And market sentiment shows it very well.
Finally, four major indices that don't look as if they are about to crash.
| Shanghai |
Germany |
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| India |
Japan |
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The Paradigm Gold Portfolio has performed well in 2015 and by my assessment the stocks are cheap on PERs and yields and well as having the lower A$ protection and production growth.
As noted, this portfolio performance has underpinned the optimism of this newsletter and as noted on a recent CNBC interview appearance, it was hard to be overall bearish when the portfolio was doing so well.
Of course the Non Gold sectors have been horrible despite record exports, imports and consumption for almost all the industrial metals and for iron ore. Please note that LME inventories have continued their medium term declines (other than some obvious warehouse transfers from stale bulls(?)) and this reflects the record consumption and limited new supply.
Oil, iron ore and coal have seen substantial investment in new capacity so the concept of oversupply against firm demand has applied. More on oil at a later date and but you should note this data :-
- double digit growth in consumption of transportation fuels in many countries in 2015,
- the ~1.8% total increase in global oil consumption in 2015 and more in 2016
- the 64% decline in the Baker Hughes US oil rig count in Calendar 2015(52% fall for gas rigs)
- the 30% decline crude oil output since the peak in Dec 2014 in key Eagle Ford tight oil field.
- Global crude oil stocks are high but are still only 6-8% above the five year averages
All make fascinating reading and the issues developing between Iran and Saudi Arabia may yet become a major issue for Saudi oil production. Note too the big bond issues to prop up the Saudi budget, local petrol price subsidies significantly reduced there and also the discussions on selling assets, including listing 5% of Saudi Aramco oil company with its 260bn bbls of reserves. Saudi Arabia might also be raising cash to fund military activities.
Oil is back to the 2008 lows and also the highs of the 1990s. May soon be time to call a bottom here.
Markets are always difficult to assess but true value always wins.
You can contact me at
bdawes@psec.com.au or +61 2 9222 9111.
I own: NST, BLK, GOR, MLX, TBR, DRM, MML, RSG, CGN, GEE, TNR, TYX, MUS, ARS
Edition #44
Following the share of market turnover of the ASX S&P 300 Gold Index has been a very useful task with this indicator giving us a great deal of confidence in the Dawes Points views.
So have a look at this! The Gold Sector made up 14% of ASX AllOrds turnover in the past 2 weeks and the 5 week moving average hit 12.6% while the 12 week is 7.5%. Astonishing!
I was happy that the downtrend had broken but the moving averages of the last peak in the sector have just been left behind.
There is a massive need to BUY! The market is drastically underweight.
The Index is only just starting to move and this break above 3000 should get close to 6000 in 2016.
And the Dawes Points Gold Index corrections chart is suggesting a massive rally is about to unfold.
The driver is primarily that gold stocks are still very cheap against the A$ gold price.
The Australian stocks are leading their North American counterparts but a high volume break out also occurred last week.
And I hope you recall this very long term graphic of the Barron's Gold Mining Index back to 1940.
And the North American stocks are trading at less than 25% of previous 25 year history. (plus graphic)
Gold stocks will outperform gold and probably almost everything else for the next few years.
The portfolio gives everyone a mix of size, liquidity, dividends, growth and risk so I am very happy to reinforce the selections.
Newcrest has more gold resources than anyone else and improvements will allow resumption of dividends. Northern Star is just brilliant and Oceania Gold has some excellent leverage. Evolution has acquired a massive swag of gold resources over the past couple of years and will be a big player in the Zuleika Shear zone.
These stocks will be the dividend paying cornerstones of every pension fund for the next decade.
Blackham will continue to please everyone for quite a while and my target of A$1 in my research report in early 2015 stands firm. This is a potentially very long mine life play.
Doray, Saracen, MetalsX and Gold Road among the developers are flying.
Tribune is outstanding and the market place will soon cotton on to the significance of Pegasus and the East Kundana JV. Its 140koz of gold bullion in the vaults currently worth over A$4.00 per share is an added golden bonus.
The offshore players of Medusa and Resolute are just too cheap.
The smaller growth players look very exciting and will be happy to talk to anyone about them.
There are of course many other attractive gold stocks out there( like Dacian Gold and Perseus) and they will be covered soon but let's just stay focussed for now.
And the Australian Gold Sector is leading the world out of this miserable pricing time. Gold stocks, gold, metals companies, industrial metals, technology metals, then oil, oil and gas companies and the bulk commodity producers will follow.
So participate in the gold sector now with a good portfolio approach and let's have some real fun.
I own NST, NCM, GOR, DRM, MLX, CGN, TYX, TBR, BLK, TNR, MML, RSG, GEE
8 February 2016
Edition #45
The XGD is barely above the levels of 2003 and PERs and yields are now very attractive for this sector. Also the buybacks of so many Australian gold mines from the likes of Barrick and Newmont is actually giving domestic companies a more significant share of Australian gold production again.
The A$ below US$0.75 has provided an average gold price of around A$1,550 so far in 2015 and helped a large build up in cash for gold producers.
Dividends are flowing again.
Gold production in Australia is increasing and several new important expansions should see further growth over the next several years.
Source: BREE and Paradigm estimates
The action in the gold share market here in Australia is strongly suggestive of the bottoming process being mature and the real long term uptrend in gold and gold stocks is resuming.
As stated, this market action is very constructive and an improvement is being noted in market breadth, smaller stocks are running and investors are taking up capital raisings again.
I actually have my first gold sector IPO sponsorship since 2007 now underway with A$4.2m for Golden Eagle Mining coming soon.
The market action is very encouraging with XGD's share of All Ordinaries market $ turnover now well over 2% again and looking to double from here.
The prospects for earnings and dividends is what drives stock prices and gold companies always have also had the option value of a higher gold price or increased resources. The prospects in recent years have been quite the opposite so all option value has been squeezed out and value is now substantial.
The prospects now are greatly enhanced but sentiment is still very poor so the opportunity has ''once in a generation'' status.
The XGD is still 70% below the April 2011 high when A$ gold was A$1408/oz. It is now A$1550.
As always, it is important to put all market action in to perspective and to consider what the markets are really telling us.
Again, the adage, `heed the markets, not the commentators' has helped so much.
The markets are also saying that the physical demand from India and China is strongly underpinning demand and that, in great contrast, the record level of over 300 futures contract ounces sold for each deliverable ounce registered on COMEX says a serious mismatch might just develop along the way.
The current market is not a just a random point in time but a manifestation of the long term global outlook but coloured by today's sentiment.
Returning to my previously published long term themes we can note that the oil price bottomed at around US$10/bbl in Dec Qtr 1998 and then had almost 10 years of rising prices before peaking at US$147 in May 2008. The CRB index of commodities (itself highly skewed to energy) showed a similar rise.
The forces behind the commodity bull market were global growth and the remarkable entry of China and its voracious demand for raw materials. From the resource sector perspective, the rise of the steel industry in China to over 800mtpa and China being responsible for the consumption of around 50% of most industrial metals dwarfed anything in modern economic history.
Export volumes and market prices were very strong and the marginal increases in demand required marginal increases in output and often these marginal increases were from marginal projects.
So a slowing in demand growth created a change in the market momentum and sentiment and brought about a sharp fall in prices and over seven years of bear market since mid 2008.
The speculative blip was 2010-2011 but this has now been thoroughly squeezed out.
We can see this in the performances of the various resources indices in terms of price but we can see this even more painfully in the declining share of ASX market turnover.
Mining and Metals had 25-30% of turnover for 2007 to 2012 with spikes to 35%. Its down to just 13% now. Google, Apple, Tesla and banks have been far more attractive to investors.
But this downtrend has now broken and like the Gold Sector is attracting accumulation.
However, we should all note that the real reason for this improvement is what Dawes Points has been saying all along.
The Chinese economy is still growing and with the important One Road One Belt Silk Road concept the demand for raw materials will be maintained and will continue to grow.
Crude steel production has held up well against the calls for a major fall but surging steel exports to ASEAN and to the numerous China-sponsored infrastructure projects in many parts of the world have hidden weaker internal demand.
Nevertheless there has been a major drawdown of iron ore inventory on the part of the steel mills in China, a drawdown in the port stocks in China from over 110mt to under 90mt and all the major producers have run down their own mine and port stocks. Obviously the high cost exporters around the world have stopped and domestic magnetite concentrate production in China is falling sharply at last.
I had expected a short cover rally in iron ore in this half year as this inventory reduction is readjusted upwards but it hasn't eventuated.
Consumption of most metals however is still at record or near record levels and LME inventories continue their declines.
This is not the stuff of recessions and major declines in economic activity.
The GFC only spurred China onward but its 1,375m people have had a taste of a better life and this can only grow stronger.
China has also the long term goals of its westward-looking agenda that aims to link not only the 3,300 mi people Dawes Points referred to over the past few months but to Europe linking another 1,100m to East Asia.
In today's crisis with IS in the Middle East, the infrastructure quest through the `Stans might actually change the power base and outflank the extremists and lead to Islam's own Reformation. Who knows!
We still need to continually revise what we think of China. Those 1,375m people will be 1,400m very soon and the build of infrastructure will continue to change trade patterns.
The 
In my experience, all this is almost guaranteeing a return to robustly positive markets in the decade ahead.
In contrast, the market place is still extremely bearish and copper hit a six year low last week but some interesting things are taking place elsewhere.
Firstly here at home Australia is a major global producer of raw materials. The lower A$ has been very helpful in allowing A$ cost producers to recover and rapid changes have been made in the domestic cost structures as well. Some stocks are holding up well and like the Gold Sector, are leading the world out of the gloom.
On a bigger scale, the performance of commodities and the equities of those companies that produce and use them often give us clues to the sentiment of the market place.
Oil may be bottoming because major integrated oil and gas companies' stock prices and the US E&P indices are not confirming recent lower oil prices. Oil demand is still rising at 1.5mbopd each year and US tight oil output is declining.
We can look at Exxon, Conoco, Chevron, SHELL, BP and BG Group to show constructive market action and the S&P E&P (Exploration and Production) Index may be indicating its 60% fall in 18 months is overdone. In Australia, Woodside, Beach/Drillsearch and Origin look better and Santos after its capital raising might just get by.
Iron ore stocks FMG and Rio are not confirming a lower US$ iron ore price although BHP and Vale are weaker and are carrying the weight of the SAMARCO tailings dam collapse. (We might ask what the Brazillian bureaucracy was doing about the standards they had previously laid down.)
All this is against a global economy that hasn't fallen over and the US, China and India may just get stronger. Even Japan with its stagnant economy is still cranking out steel at full capacity of 110mtpa.
So the outlook is looking even more encouraging and for us in Resourcesland this graphic below is speaking volumes in clear data.
Our basic livelihood of emerging resources companies (XSR) is showing another clear break in the decline of market share of All Ords turnover.
The market for small resources is improving. This is hard evidence here but the signs are everywhere.
Interestingly, while the XMM and ASX200 Resources were breaking to new lows the XSR has been assisted by the XGD and has held up well.
Dawes Points also knows this from recent capital raisings for small resources companies.
So the US bond market is looking very toppy with the 10 year having its peak over three years ago. It is taking a long time to roll over but the result is inevitable. The downward adjustment could take place at anytime now and the raising of short term interest rates may be the trigger.
The world has invested almost US$90trillion in bonds.
Even a tiny flow into hedges could be massive in commodity and resources stocks.
More speculative plays are
I own DRM, NST,MLX, RSG, TBR, GOR, BLK, MML, TNR, TYX and PNR. STO, BHP, DFM, BPT.
Edition #43