Barrick Mining (ABX.TO)

(Market Call Minute) Led the group lower.

His least favourite of the big producers. It is too big. Too hard to grow. Get into G-T

Stock has been disappointing. Largest producer of gold. Challenge is to grow production. They had a management change and they are more focused on cost controls. This is positive to some extent. Some of their projects have come in late. She prefers G-T. She likes gold. We could get a pullback in gold depending on the resolution to the fiscal cliff

It has had its problems in execution. Last of the big ones to do gold hedging. This is the way to play gold as it has lagged gold over the last year, but he would prefer G-T or YRI-T

He still unclear on what the strategy is, so would like to know before getting excited about it. New projects are getting way more excited.

Has no interest in owning this. Costs seem to be out of control, which is a problem with most gold companies. Also, this is not a pure precious metals company. Got very big in the copper business. If he wants copper, he buys a copper company.

Everyone hates it today because of the miss on earnings. This is one where you hold your nose and buy it. Lots of reserves. Not best performing in the short term but it looks good. Management shakeup.

Earnings were quite disappointing and their costs keep rising for the Pascua Lama project. It will take a little while to turn around. Believes they will be able to turn it around but it will take a while to happen. Good assets and growth.

Thinks gold can go higher for any number of reasons but that is the crux of the problem. Gold can go higher but what has happened globally in the last 5 years is that if you want to own gold, you can just buy the metal itself. Gold companies have operating issues and they’re sometimes in difficult political environments. This is such a large company, that it basically has to run to stand still effectively.

Too big for him. It is 8 million ounces a year and you have to replace 8 million ounces a year. Too big to grow as much as some of the smaller names.

2 elements at least that goes into the decision about this company. 1^st one is the price of gold. Secondly the increasing difficulty global mining companies have in extracting gold. Extraction costs are going up.

This company has been a laggard. The large-cap gold stocks are starting to rally and they will lead over the small caps. Expect the current gold rally will continue for a while. You can either buy the big caps or the iShares S&P/TSX Global Gold ETF (XGD-T), which gives you the basket and you’re not left with a one stock that didn’t participate.

Stock has forever seemed to trade in a range of $30-$50. Gold is now at $1700 and the stock has done rather poorly. Has never been a cheap stock. He would expect a write-down at some point on their copper acquisition as copper prices will continue to be weak from here.

Gold prices have gone up recently because of the stimulus going on globally. There are enough people that don’t trust fiat currencies to buy gold. There is more and more currency every day to buy gold so gold is responding positively. Gold stocks generally have been poor performers. It gold prices where to go to $1200 an ounce, he could see this company going down a lot but if it went to $2000 he could see this company not going up that much.

(A Top Pick July 12/11. Down 12.11%.) If you own, continue to Hold.