
Ideally, gold would only be mined in the United States. That would at least remove foreign exchange swings from the many sources of volatility in the shares of gold mining companies, which typically book sales in dollars and costs in local currencies. Unfortunately for investors in Highland Gold Mining (HGM), this isn’t the case. Indeed, a strengthening rouble and attendant cost inflation has prevented shares in the Russian miner from matching the 16 per cent ‘return’ of a dollar-denominated ounce of gold in 2017.