10 Stocks With Surprising Gains

Ten stocks soared higher on Thursday, with four mining stocks notably joining the list, thanks to the surge in prices of gold and silver during the session.

The firms outpaced a sluggish performance on Wall Street, with the tech-heavy Nasdaq leading the drop by 0.83 percent, followed by the S&P 500 by 0.53 percent, and the Dow Jones with 0.25 percent.

In this article, we name the 10 companies leading strong gains and detail the reasons behind their performance.

To come up with the list, we focused exclusively on stocks with a $2 billion market capitalization and 5 million in trading volume.

10. AST SpaceMobile Inc. (NASDAQ:ASTS)

AST SpaceMobile extended its winning streak to a fourth straight day on Thursday, jumping 7.53 percent to close at $30.85 apiece as investors scrambled to ride on the growth opportunities from a potential tie-up with billionaire Jeff Bezos.

Earlier this week, speculations surfaced about a potential tie-up between AST SpaceMobile Inc. (NASDAQ:ASTS) and Blue Origin following an Instagram post by the former’s board member, Adriana Cisneros, showing herself alongside CEO Abel Avellan and Bezos, in a photo.

She also captioned: “Amazing things are happening at AST & Science + Blue Origin.”

Prior to the Instagram post, Blue Origin executives visited the AST SpaceMobile, Inc. (NASDAQ:ASTS) headquarters in Texas, with speculations that discussions may have gone beyond launch logistics to cover broader strategic and financial matters.

AST SpaceMobile, Inc. (NASDAQ:ASTS) already holds a major commercial agreement with Blue Origin for the launch of up to 45 BlueBird Block 2 satellites, with the option to add 15 more.

9. Pan American Silver Corp. (NYSE:PAAS)

Pan American Silver rallied for a fifth consecutive day on Thursday, jumping 7.56 percent to close at $28.60 apiece, in line with silver prices hitting a new all-time high.

Silver futures rose to as high as $36.27 per troy ounce at intra-day trading on Thursday, its highest since 2012, before closing lower to $35.81 per troy ounce. Silver prices grew alongside gold, as investors’ funds flocked to safer assets anew to mitigate the risks from the ongoing trade tensions between the US and China.

Pan American Silver Corp. (NYSE:PAAS) is a Canada-based silver and gold miner with operations throughout the Americas.

In the first quarter of the year, Pan American Silver Corp. (NYSE:PAAS) swung to a net income of $169.3 million from a $30.8 million net loss in the same period last year.

Revenues increased by 28 percent to $773.2 million from $601.4 million year-on-year.