Aaron, the gold miners have been underperforming the gains in bullion since April 2002; this has been true using both the Philadelphia Gold & Silver index (XAU) and the AMEX Gold Bugs index (HUI). The latter includes only companies which do no long-term gold sales. Collectively, investors have been unwilling to reward the miners with higher share prices; whether this is fear of gold's rise being unsustainable, fear of impending interest rates hikes, fear of declining inflation or fear of a rising dollar is immaterial. You simply would have been better off buying bullion in any representation than mining stocks. The merger news means a large industry player sees consolidation as a cheap way of buying bullion. A parallel to this would be British Petroleum's acquisition of Arco in the late 1990s. That turned out to be a brilliant piece of market timing. Of course, other oil industry mergers have occurred at price peaks: Think DuPont's ill-timed acquisition of Conoco in the early 1980s. I lean toward Barrick making a well-timed move in its bid for Placer Dome. Even if gold falls, they have a margin for safety and can close high-cost mines first.