An updated analysis of the arbitrage between gold and gold-miners

In my article about the arbitrage opportunity between gold and gold-miners, I cautioned that we should take the analysis with a grain of salt because of the short history of GDX (a gold-miners ETF). Adam Phillips of Van Eck Global, the firm which created GDX, has kindly pointed out to me that GDX is designed to track the Amex Gold Miners Index, GDM, which has a much longer history. Hence I repeated the analysis with gold spot prices vs. GDM for the last 3 years. The results confirm my earlier analysis with much higher statistical significance: GDM cointegrates with gold prices with over 99% probability. Here I plot the difference between the spot prices of 6.1 troy ounce of gold and the GDM index multiplied by 3.68 (to compare with my earlier plot, I normalize the gold prices and the GDM index so that the Gold-GDM spread yields roughly the same dollar value as the GLD-GDX spread at any time):

The mean-reversion of this spread is even more obvious than my plot in the earlier article. Also, with the longer history, we get a much better feel for the range of fluctuations. While the value of the spread is about -$213 as of the close of Nov 9, it can certainly go much lower before reverting, based on the highs and lows of the last 3 years.


FOOTNOTE

A reader of my earlier article made an interesting comment about shorting ETF’s such as GDX and GLD. He argued that since ETF shares can be constantly created, it should not require existing shares to be borrowed for shorting. I asked Mr. Phillips of Van Eck Global about this, and he confirmed to me that a newer ETF like GDX can in fact be hard to borrow. He went on to say that the borrowing of ETF’s has nothing to do with the issuer. The issuer can indeed create an unlimited supply of the shares, but the trader still need to borrow them from his or her broker for shorting. He also told me he is currently working hard to eliminate any borrowing problems in GDX that may have existed.