Owning SSR Mining (SSRM 5.39%) stock hasn't been a lot of fun this past week.
Shares of the gold miner (which also mines copper, silver, lead, and zinc) are down 5.4% through 11:40 a.m. ET Thursday. This is only SSR's second straight day of declines, but the stock's down 19% since hitting its all-time high above $28 on Jan. 28.
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Gold and silver prices fall
What's ailing SSR Mining? No mystery there: After hitting an all-time high of $5,419.80 per ounce on Jan. 28, gold prices plunged below $4,660 through Monday, according to data from TradingEconomics.com. Prices have recovered somewhat since, and stand at 4,879.10 currently.
The story on silver is similar -- but worse. Again, prices peaked on Jan. 28 -- at $116.58 per ounce. By Monday, silver was selling for just $79.21. After a brief bounce higher, though, silver prices have resumed falling, hitting $76.82 today.
It makes sense that when the products SSR mines and sells get cheaper, so too would its stock price.
NASDAQ: SSRM
Key Data Points
Is SSR Mining stock a sell?
And yet, this is hardly news to Wall Street. Gold and silver prices are widely available, and the costs SSR Mining incurs to mine silver and gold are also well known. That makes it easy for Wall Street analysts to do the math and forecast how much SSR is likely to earn.
And what do these analysts say?
Simply this: SSR stock costs 24 times trailing earnings today. But gold and silver prices are so much higher now than last year (even after their recent decline), that SSR's forward P/E ratio is less than 6. With earnings forecast to more than double next year, SSR stock has a PEG ratio of about 0.2.
SSR stock looks like a buy to me.
