We recently compiled a list of the 10 Best Gold Stocks to Buy According to Reddit and Robinhood. In this article, we are going to take a look at where Agnico Eagle Mines Limited (NYSE:AEM) stands against the other gold stocks.

Regarded as a safe investment option, hedging investors against inflation, Gold has been a highly demanded precious metal historically. As such, in 2023, the precious metal’s demand soared by 3% year-over-year (YoY), hitting the 4,899 tons mark. This is on the back of growing demand from emerging markets like India and China, who were responsible for 75% of this demand. This ever-increasing trajectory of demand is expected to continue in the current year as well which is going to be discussed below.

Amidst the inflationary state in the U.S. for the past while, and the resulting uncertainty in the market, gold has seen its prices rise in 2023, reaching its all-time high, on the back of 13% increase. The increase in demand mainly came from central banks, the industrial sector, and investors. A trend was also observed in 2023, wherein the global sovereign wealth funds were reported to be increasing their holdings in the precious metal.

The price of gold is a complex mechanism, as it is impacted by several factors like demand, market stability, and interest rates, to name a few. Nevertheless, several analysts are looking to a positive future for gold, as they expect the prices to be sitting somewhere between $2,421.00 and $2,651.00 (per ounce rate) by the current year end, as compared to its current price of $2374.31, as of writing this article.

This trend is also shaping up on the back of the Fed’s plans for a rate cut later in the year, as the gold prices usually have an inverse relationship with the market interest rate. As such, the rate cut that is expected to occur somewhere in September is also helping analysts forecast the precious metal’s price increase in 2024.

Following is what was spoken about the gold market by an analyst at PrimeXBT, Kathryn Davies, in June 2024:

“Gold has fallen from its all-time high of $2,222 after the SNB cut rates, boosting the USD. However, the gold price remains supported by the prospect of Federal Reserve rate cuts and a lower interest rate environment globally. Elevated geopolitical tensions and central bank purchases also keep demand high, and the price supported. As a result, Gold could see more all-time highs as we progress through 2024, rising to $2400 by the year’s end.”

In terms of the global market, China is a crucial player in the gold market – China is not only the largest producer of gold (producing 12% of gold in 2023), but also the largest consumer of gold, with its central bank, on its own, buying 225 tons of gold in 2023, up from 62 tons in the previous year. Analysts have attributed China’s massive buying of gold to the freezing of Russian assets by the U.S. and its allies, which China is attempting to hedge itself from by buying Gold – pushing up the gold prices by doing so.

Australia and Russia closely follow China in the gold production game; in 2023, China, Russia, and Australia recorded a gold production volume of 375 tons, 325 tons, and 314 tons, respectively. The U.S. was placed 5^th on the same list created by Insider Monkey, with a production volume of 173 tons! To date, 209,000 tons of gold have been mined across the globe, equaling a value of massive $12 trillion!

Having discussed the expected future of gold prices, it’s time we explore the world of gold stocks, which directly correlate with the gold price trajectory. Thus, let’s now jump to our list of 10 Best Gold Stocks to Buy According to Reddit and Robinhood.

Methodology

Extensive research across the Reddit discussion forums, along with the Robinhood Index, helped us in curating our preliminary list of all the stocks discussed across the two sources. Based on the analysts’ sentiment regarding each stock across both sources, we assigned the Reddit score and Robinhood score to the stocks and ranked them based on the average score, which we will refer to as the Overall score. Lower the score, better the ranking of stock. For stocks with an equal Overall score, we used Reddit score as the tiebreaker.

The overall score was derived from the number of upticks on Reddit forums against the respective stocks, and the number of analysts assigning buy ratings to the respective stocks on Robinhood. We also peeked into Insider Monkey’s database that tracks the activity of 920 hedge funds, wherein we collected information about the hedge fund investors’ holders of all these stocks to reaffirm the respective stocks’ sentiment across the two sources.

Why are we interested in the stocks that hedge funds pile into? The reason is simple: our research has shown that we can outperform the market by imitating the top stock picks of the best hedge funds. Our quarterly newsletter’s strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 275% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 150 percentage points (see more details here).

Agnico Eagle Mines Limited (NYSE:AEM)       

Overall Score: 3.5

Reddit Score: 2

Robinhood Score: 5

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 46

The next stock on our list, Agnico Eagle Mines Limited (NYSE:AEM), is one of the stocks owned by the billionaire, John Paulson; a $47 million stake is owned in the stock by Paulson & Co. Agnico Eagle Mines Limited (NYSE:AEM) is a Canadian gold mining company, with its operations based in several regions including Canada, Australia, Finland, and Mexico.

With a dividend yield of 2.3%, an annual dividend of $1.6, and a quarterly dividend payout frequency, the stock is one of the best gold dividend stocks to buy in 2024, giving investors that chill of dividend, in addition to a cool upside of 15.6%. The revenue of the stock for Q1 2024 also soared to over $1.8 billion, climbing 21% over the first quarter of 2023, on the back of solid production from Canadian Malartic, Macassa, and Nunavut operations – as a result of that, along with high gold prices, the free cash flows of the company increased by 50% to $396 million for the quarter, which is itself a record in the company’s history. Furthermore, margins soared at $1 billion, attributed to two of their largest mines, Detour Lake and Canadian Malartic.

However, investors must keep an eye out on the company’s all-in sustaining costs in the coming three quarters, as the company expects them to increase from $1,191 per ounce in Q1 2024 to somewhere between $1,200 to $1,250; thus, it’s worthy to see what impact this increase would bring to the growth of company’s profitability and cashflows, if any.

Furthermore, the company has increased its stake in Maple Gold Mines from 12% to 19.9% in June 2024, showcasing its commitment to drive its growth. Furthermore, the company is making positive developments in its pipeline projects like Odyssey mine at the Canadian Malartic complex (500,000 ounces of production expected by 2030). As such, the stock has rose 17.9% in the last one month, and the stock has also experienced growing popularity amongst hedge fund investors, whose number has increased from 43 to 46 on the QoQ basis, increasing the invested value to $877.7 million. First Eagle Investment Management and Millennium Management are the biggest investors of the stock with investments of $411 million and $174 million, respectively.

Overall AEM ranks 4th on our list of the best gold stocks to buy according to Reddit and Robinhood. You can visit 10 Best Gold Stocks to Buy According to Reddit and Robinhood to see the other gold stocks that are on hedge funds’ radar. While we acknowledge the potential of AEM as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns and doing so within a shorter timeframe. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than AEM but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.

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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.