" The trouble with valuing the gold miners is a derivative of the issue with gold itself: I simply don't have a reliable way to value the metal. I suppose we could try to value the miners by looking at traditional metrics, such as the price-earnings ratio or book value. However, two highly random, unknowable inputs -- the price of the metal and the accuracy of total reserve estimates -- are so critical to valuing the miners that the usual valuation measures become slave to these data points...... Owners of the gold miners need to recognize exactly what they are doing -- making multiple speculative forecasts, not investments based on probabilities. " http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-07-16/are-shares-of-gold-mining-companies-a-buy-