The Barron’s Gold Mining Index (BGMI) goes back all the way to 1939 - but unfortunately it is not updated automatically. The "Philadelphia Gold and Silver Index" (XAU) is an index of thirty precious metals mining companies and it goes back to 1983. Today, the XAU is THE benchmark for companies in the mining sector for precious metals. This comparative chart shows how the mining stocks perform compared to the metals that they produce. It demonstrates that over the long run - the physical metals tend to outperform the mining stocks.
Measuring the BGMI in Gold (instead of dollars) indicates that Gold is outperforming the stocks and that the ratio is going lower over time. Since the BMGI is not updated automatically the XAU/Gold ratio is placed below.
The XAU/Gold ratio gets updated daily. However, it only goes back to 1983.
This chart contains BGMI data before September 19th 2005 and XAU data thereafter. Doing so leads to an automatically updated chart that correlates very strongly with the actual BGMI/Gold ratio.
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