As for Newmont, the stock is now trading at the price it did when gold was roughly $350 an ounce. I find it rather perverse that the companies whose products are direct beneficiaries of stagflation/inflation are the ones manifestly being hurt by inflation, as their energy and attendant costs have screamed up much faster than metal prices. Concomitantly, the money spent by mining companies on exploration has not yet had enough time to bear fruit. (Parenthetically, I note that Newmont has been getting absolutely no credit for its financially successful investment in the Canadian Oil Sands Trust (COSWF, news, msgs). The trust has a working interest in energy resources being developed in the tar sands of Alberta.) Thus, for the moment, the miners are stocks without friends -- which is precisely the opportunity one looks for when one is a "contrarian." (For more on the trust, click here.) Newmont's stock price now assumes it costs Newmont $250 to mine an ounce of gold. (Using the framework I've discussed in my daily column, divide Newmont’s market cap -- $16.68 billion -- by the company’s estimated 91 million ounces of gold in the ground and you get $183 per ounce. Subtract $183 from gold’s recent price, $433 an ounce, and you get $250.) If the company were to drive cash costs back to where they were two years ago, i.e., approximately $200, then, using the same methodology at today's gold price, Newmont should sell at $47, not around $36. Looking at it this way, one can see that it has been costs that have hurt Newmont's stock price. But let me be clear: This is just my way of looking at metals stocks vs. bullion, and it may or may not be the right way to view the situation. And the logic has worked well in the past. Obviously, future production increases and a rising or falling gold price will affect the price of Newmont. It should also be noted that the company had a poor first quarter last year, and its stock price bottomed out in early May 2004.