Gold's $500, But Where's the Excitement?

Gold is on a tear. It has shot up from $420 in July to $500 today -- a price not seen since 1987. If investors were thinking that breaking the $500 mark would set off investor fervor, they were mistaken. The percentage-gainers list for any major exchange isn't littered with gold stocks, although major gold stocks like NewmontMining (NYSE:NEM) are making new highs.

The conventional wisdom in ages past was that high gold prices helped smaller and/or high-cost producers the most, as shifts upwards should move the needle most on the bottom line. As intuitive as that sounds, there are examples in today's market where that logic just isn't playing out.

Look at Cambior (AMEX:CBJ). Last quarter, its cost of extracting gold was $314 an ounce. To give that price some perspective, the current gold bull market was just getting ready to cross that price level in April 2002. So with gold at $500, the stock must be soaring, right? Wrong -- the price is stuck midway between the 52-week high and low. Even the company's recently announced sale of the Carlota copper project, for $15 million in cash and 6,250 ounces of gold, wasn't enough to ignite this stock.

Another small producer with a stock price close to its 52-week low is Golden Star (AMEX:GSS). Although the company plans to increase production from 220,000 ounces this year to 500,000 in 2007, investors aren't buying into the hype.

Investors, it seems, are wisely looking at the net loses at Cambior and Golden Star and standing on the sidelines. They want to see the cash flow necessary to grow operations before sending these stocks skyward. Given the operating structures these companies are saddled with, that doesn't seem particularly likely -- at least not for the foreseeable future.

But don't assume the big boys have booming stock prices, either. Placer Dome (NYSE:PDG) is expecting to produce 3.6 million ounces of gold in 2005 at a mined cost of between $280 and $285 an ounce. Look at a one-year chart and you'll see the stock had trended downward until BarrickGold (NYSE:ABX) offered $9.2 billion for Placer. Still, even after the spike in price, Placer is selling for less than it fetched one year ago (which may explain why they're labeling the Barrick offer as inadequate).

Gold's price is soaring, but Wall Street is taking a sober look at these stocks. The relatively plaintive glances and negligible price appreciation from Wall Street say that investors were already looking for $500 gold prices and higher. Either that, or they're not expecting them to hold, as trailing P/E multiples on Barrick and Newmont aren't anywhere near historic highs.

But at the end of the day, the gold companies are poised to reap the benefits of higher gold prices, at least for the time being. Investors, though, have already priced that exciting news into gold stock prices.

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Fool contributor W.D. Crotty does not own stock in any of the companies mentioned. Click here to see the Motley Fool's disclosure policy.