The Invasion of the Quants in the Gold Space
In the summer of 2016, I travelled to Toronto and New York where I met with many sell side gold fund analysts. Since retail investors were not big investors in gold mutual funds, then who were the buyers? The only serious people buying that early were quants and huge hedge funds. The question, then, was: What factors or models were the quants using to uncover gold’s meteoric rise last year?
From our thousands of hours of data mining, we discovered low SG&A-to-revenue. “SG&A” stands for “selling, general and administrative expenses” and refers to the daily operational costs of running a company that are not related to making a product. It includes everything from shipping fees to salaries to utilities. SG&A-to-revenue is an unusual factor, not typically used amount analysts and fund managers, so we were curious to apply it.
Using this information, we looked just at the first quarter to find the mining companies that spent the least amount of money on these daily operations relative to revenue. Mining companies, after all, have had trouble with expense discipline.
What we discovered was nothing short of astonishing. All combined, the top 10 gold companies for the quarter – led by South Africa’ based Harmony Gold – returned a spectacular 88 percent. That’s almost double what the Market Vectors Gold Miners ETF (GDX) returned over the same period (45.5 percent).
About Frank Holmes
Frank Holmes is the CEO and chief investment officer of U.S. Global Investors. Mr. Holmes purchased a controlling interest in U.S. Global Investors in 1989 and became the firm’s chief investment officer in 1999. In 2006, Mr. Holmes was selected mining fund manager of the year by the Mining Journal, and in 2011 he was named a U.S. Metals and Mining “TopGun” by Brendan Wood International. In 2016, Mr. Holmes and portfolio manager Ralph Aldis received the award for Best Americas Based Fund Manager from the Mining Journal. He is also the co-author of The Goldwatcher: Demystifying Gold Investing. More than 30,000 subscribers follow his weekly commentary in the award-winning Investor Alert newsletter which is read in over 180 countries.
Under his guidance, the company’s mutual funds have received recognition from Lipper and Morningstar, two trusted independent financial authorities. In 2015, Mr. Holmes led the company into the exchange traded fund (ETF) business with the launch of the U.S. Global Jets ETF, which invests in the global airline sector.
Mr. Holmes was awarded the Huron Medal of Distinction from Huron University College in 2013, his alma mater for class of 1978. This award recognizes individuals whose life achievements set an example of excellence and reflect Huron’s arts and social sciences missions.
Mr. Holmes is a native of Toronto and is a graduate of the University of Western Ontario with a bachelor’s degree in economics. He is a former president and chairman of the Toronto Society of the Investment Dealers Association.
Mr. Holmes is a much-sought-after keynote speaker at national and international investment conferences. He has spoken at the Investing in African Mining Indaba conference, the Denver Gold Group’s European Gold Forum and numerous Money Show events, sat on panels with prominent industry leaders including the editor of Barron’s, and continues to be invited as a keynote speaker at conferences throughout the U.S., Canada and overseas.
Mr. Holmes is a regular commentator on the financial television networks CNBC, Bloomberg, BNN and Fox Business, and has been profiled by Fortune as well as The Financial Times. His thoughts on gold are captured each week on a program called Gold Game Film in collaboration with Kitco News and TheStreet.com. Mr. Holmes was also the feature spread in Barron’s during the commodity rally at the start of 2004. He is a regular contributor to Forbes, Business Insider, Seeking Alpha and Wall Street Journal’s Experts Corner.