Canadian Gold Stocks: Ranked on Margin, Not Ounces

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Gold closed at $4,216.30 an ounce on October 9, 2026, on the December COMEX contract, the active month. That is a very large number by any historical standard, and it is also 20.7% below the $5,318.40 the front-month contract fetched at the peak on January 29 of this year. Gold is down only 2.9% for the calendar year, because the peak and the fall both happened inside it. Both facts are true at once, and the second one is the reason this page exists in the form it does.

For most of the last two years, picking Canadian gold stocks was easy in the way that picking anything is easy when the underlying commodity goes straight up. Ounces were what mattered. The companies that dug up the most of them made the most money. That period ended in late January, and eight months of falling gold prices have started to separate the businesses that were genuinely profitable from the ones that were simply present during a boom.

So this page does not rank Canadian gold stocks on production, market capitalisation or reserves. It ranks them on a single number that each company publishes about itself every quarter: the share of each gold dollar it actually keeps after paying for everything it takes to keep the mine running. In the second quarter of 2026 that number ranged from 92.1 cents to 37.5 cents across eleven of the largest Canadian gold names. That spread is the whole argument.

Every company figure below comes from that company’s own quarterly earnings release, management’s discussion and analysis, or financial statements, with the document named. No figure on this page is taken from a data aggregator. All amounts are in US dollars, which is how every one of these companies reports, even the ones listed only in Toronto.

How to Buy Gold Stocks in Canada

Buying a gold stock is the same mechanical process as buying any other TSX-listed share, and if you already hold Canadian equities you can skip to the rankings. If you do not, here is the whole path.

You need a brokerage account. Canadian gold producers trade on the Toronto Stock Exchange under ordinary tickers, so any Canadian broker can buy them. There is no special account, no commodity licence and no minimum net worth. If you have never opened one, our walkthrough of how to open a brokerage account covers the identity documents and the funding step, and how to buy your first stock covers the order screen itself.

Choose the account type before you choose the stock. This matters more for gold than for most sectors, because several of these companies pay little or no dividend and the return arrives as a capital gain. A TFSA shelters that gain completely. An RRSP defers it. A non-registered account taxes half of it at your marginal rate. We go through the mechanics in our guides to the TFSA and the RRSP, and there is a section further down this page on which of these specific names suits which account.

What it costs. Commission on a Canadian stock trade ranges from zero to about $10 per order depending on the broker. On a $5,000 position that is a difference of 0.2%, which is real but small next to the 20.7% gold has moved since its January peak. The larger cost for most people is the currency conversion, and it only applies if you buy the New York listing instead of the Toronto one. Every company on this page trades in Toronto in Canadian dollars, so buying the TSX line avoids the conversion entirely.

Then place the order. You will need the ticker, the number of shares and an order type. Our guide to reading a stock quote explains the bid, the ask and why a limit order is usually the right choice on a mid-cap miner where the spread can be wide.

If you are still choosing a broker, we compare the Canadian options on our investing apps page, and there is a dedicated comparison of Questrade and Wealthsimple, which is the choice most Canadians actually face. For a first account, the best broker for beginners is the shorter read.

Every company ranked on this page trades in Toronto in Canadian dollars, so a Canadian brokerage account buys all of them with no currency conversion to pay.

Open a Questrade account and buy these on the TSX

How We Ranked These

The measure is deliberately simple, and you can reproduce it from the filings yourself.

Take the average price per ounce each company actually received in the second quarter of 2026. Subtract the per-ounce cost measure that same company reports. Divide by the realized price. What is left is the share of each gold dollar the company kept.

Three things about that calculation are worth stating plainly, because they are where this kind of comparison usually goes wrong.

Realized price, not spot price. Companies do not all receive the market price. Some sell forward, some have prepay contracts, some deliver into streams. Using each company’s own realized price rather than the spot average captures that, and as you will see below it changes one answer completely.

The cost measures are not identical. Eight of these companies report all-in sustaining cost per ounce, the industry’s standard measure of what it takes to keep producing at the current rate. It includes sustaining capital and site costs but excludes growth projects, taxes and financing. Agnico Eagle reports its figure per ounce produced on a by-product basis while the others report per ounce sold; the difference is small in a normal quarter but it is a difference. Franco-Nevada and Wheaton Precious Metals are not miners at all, and their cash cost per gold equivalent ounce is the contractual amount they pay for delivered metal. It carries no sustaining capital because they own no mines. Their numbers are therefore structurally better and it would be dishonest to present them as a like-for-like operating comparison. What the comparison does show correctly is how much of the gold price reaches each company, which is the question a shareholder is actually asking.

A good margin is not the same as cash. All-in sustaining cost deliberately leaves out growth capital. A company can keep 56 cents of every gold dollar and still consume cash if it is building something expensive. Two companies on this list did exactly that in the quarter. So the ranking has one override, applied mechanically rather than by taste: a company whose free cash flow was negative in the quarter is placed below every company whose free cash flow was positive, however good its margin looked. That rule moved exactly one name, and the reason is written into its entry.

The Ten, Side by Side

Every figure in this table is from the company’s own second-quarter 2026 filing. The “gold can fall to” column is simply the cost line: the price at which that company’s margin on an ounce reaches zero, and how far gold would have to drop from $4,216.30 to get there. Gold now sits below every one of the ten ranked companies’ realized prices, by 3.3% at Lundin Gold and 6.4% at Alamos Gold, so the margins below were earned at prices the metal no longer fetches.

#	Company	TSX	Realized $/oz	Cost $/oz	Kept	Gold can fall to	Cost vs Q2 2025
1	Franco-Nevada	FNV	$4,387	$347	92.1%	$347 (-92%)	n/a
2	Wheaton Precious Metals	WPM	$4,443	$568	87.2%	$568 (-87%)	+39.9%
3	Lundin Gold	LUG	$4,359	$1,176	73.0%	$1,176 (-72%)	+26.9%
4	DPM Metals	DPM	$4,375	$1,214	72.3%	$1,214 (-71%)	-6.0%
5	Agnico Eagle Mines	AEM	$4,483	$1,459	67.5%	$1,459 (-65%)	+13.9%
6	Alamos Gold	AGI	$4,504	$1,728	61.6%	$1,728 (-59%)	+16.7%
7	Kinross Gold	K	$4,483	$1,821	59.4%	$1,821 (-57%)	+22.0%
8	Barrick Mining	ABX	$4,417	$1,866	57.8%	$1,866 (-56%)	+10.8%
9	IAMGOLD	IMG	$4,384	$2,271	48.2%	$2,271 (-46%)	+11.3%
10	Eldorado Gold	ELD	$4,379	$1,926	56.0%	$1,926 (-54%)	+26.7%
out	B2Gold	BTO	$3,767	$2,356	37.5%	$2,356 (-44%)	+55.1%

Sources, in order, each linked to the document the figures come from: Franco-Nevada Q2 2026 Report to Shareholders p.3, p.4, p.17, p.18, with the realized price computed as revenue of $580.9M divided by 132,405 gold equivalent ounces sold; Wheaton Precious Metals Q2 2026 news release p.2, with the realized price computed as revenue of $929.2M divided by 209,115 ounces sold, which reproduces the company’s own stated cash operating margin of $3,875 per ounce exactly; Lundin Gold Q2 2026 news release and its MD&A p.2; DPM Metals Q2 2026 news release, Key Operating and Financial Highlights; Agnico Eagle Q2 2026 news release p.1, p.4, p.5; Alamos Gold Q2 2026 news release, filed as Exhibit 99.1 to its Form 6-K; Kinross Gold Q2 2026 news release p.3; Barrick Mining Q2 2026 news release p.3, p.6; IAMGOLD Q2 2026 news release, Exhibit 99.1 to its Form 6-K; Eldorado Gold Q2 2026 news release, Exhibit 99.1 to its Form 6-K; and B2Gold Q2 2026 news release, Exhibit 99.1 to its Form 6-K.

Eldorado sits below IAMGOLD despite a better margin because of the free cash flow rule described above. Its entry explains why.

1. Franco-Nevada (TSX:FNV): the business that keeps almost everything

Franco-Nevada kept 92.1 cents of every gold dollar in the second quarter. It received an average of $4,387 per gold equivalent ounce and paid $347 for it. That is not a mining margin. It is a royalty margin, and understanding why is the single most useful thing on this page.

Franco-Nevada does not operate mines. It buys the right to a slice of a mine’s output, usually by funding construction up front, and then receives metal at a fixed contractual price for the life of the asset. When costs at that mine rise, somebody else absorbs them. When gold falls, Franco-Nevada’s margin narrows far more slowly than a miner’s, because the subtraction is $347 rather than $1,900.

The macro case. This is a business levered to gold with almost none of the operating leverage that normally comes attached. The environment that hurts it is not a falling gold price, which it can absorb for a very long way, but political risk at the mines it funded. Its revenue is spread across precious metals and a diversified segment that includes iron ore, oil and gas, so it is not a pure gold instrument either.

The record cuts against the romance. Franco-Nevada posted a loss in fiscal 2023, the only loss in the five years charted below. That was the Cobre Panama write-down, after Panama ordered the mine shut. It is the royalty model’s one genuine failure mode: you cannot fix an asset you do not operate.

The technical picture. At the October 9, 2026 close Franco-Nevada sat 5.6% above its 200-day moving average and 0.3% under its 50-day, with the 50-day above the 200-day. That is a golden cross regime, which printed on September 10 and is one of seven among these ten. One note on basis, because it governs every technical reading on this page. The regimes, cross dates and cross prices here are our own reading of unadjusted daily closes, which is the basis a price chart shows, and the TradingView chart for TSX:FNV is the reference for the levels themselves. The crossover distributions are computed on dividend-adjusted closes over each company’s full listed history, so those forward returns are total returns.

The precedent, computed. Across Franco-Nevada’s full listed history there have been twelve golden crosses. The median 90-day total return afterwards was +6.9%, with a range from -18.1% to +37.6%, and nine of the twelve were positive. The twelve death crosses produced a median of +15.6%. The death cross has the better record in this name, which is the opposite of the story the signal is usually sold with, and on samples of twelve the honest conclusion is still that neither has told you much.

Franco-Nevada ranks first because it is the most durable way to own gold exposure, not because it will rise the most if gold rallies. It will not. That is the trade.

2. Wheaton Precious Metals (TSX:WPM): the same model, with a cost problem worth watching

Wheaton kept 87.2 cents of every dollar. Revenue rose 84.7% year over year to $929.2 million and net earnings rose 85.9% to $543.2 million, which is the streaming model doing exactly what it is supposed to do in a high gold price environment.

One number deserves attention: Wheaton’s average cash cost per gold equivalent ounce rose from $406 to $568, up 39.9%, the largest increase of the ten ranked names. In absolute terms it is still trivial next to a miner’s $1,800. In proportional terms it is the fastest-rising cost line here, driven by the mix of metals delivered rather than by anything going wrong at a mine. It is worth watching rather than worrying about, but a page that reported only the flattering half of the streaming story would be incomplete.

The macro case. Wheaton is more precious-metals concentrated than Franco-Nevada, with significant silver exposure. Silver has run harder than gold in this cycle, which helps, and silver is more industrially sensitive than gold, which is the risk on the other side.

The technical picture and the precedent. Wheaton closed October 9 6.8% above its 200-day average and 0.7% under its 50-day, in a golden cross regime that printed on September 11. Fifteen prior golden crosses produced a median 90-day total return of -7.9%, ranging from -29.5% to +51.6%, with only six of the fifteen positive. The fifteen death crosses produced a median of +14.5%. As with Franco-Nevada the death cross has much the better record, which is to say the signal has been worse than useless in this name. Its chart is TSX:WPM on TradingView.

3. Lundin Gold (TSX:LUG): the best mine on this page, with a grade problem

Fruta del Norte in southeast Ecuador is one of the highest-grade gold mines in production anywhere, and it shows in the numbers. Lundin Gold’s all-in sustaining cost of $1,176 per ounce sold is the lowest of any pure miner here, and it kept 73.0 cents of every gold dollar. Gold would have to fall 72% before that mine stopped covering its sustaining costs.

The quarter was still, on balance, a disappointing one. Gold production fell from 139,433 ounces to 118,994, down 14.7%, because average mill head grade dropped from 10.4 grams per tonne to 8.3. Throughput was actually higher. The rock was simply poorer. All-in sustaining cost rose 26.9% year over year as a direct consequence, since the same fixed costs were spread over fewer ounces.

Free cash flow fell 59% to $96.0 million from $235.7 million, and cash from operations halved. Some of that is the higher costs and some of it is the company’s own reinvestment: Lundin Gold is running the largest exploration programme in its history at 133,000 metres of planned drilling, and is working toward an integrated mine and mill expansion decision later this year.

That chart shows something the annual numbers hide. Lundin Gold’s revenue fell 15.8% from the first quarter of 2026 to the second, from $567.4 million to $477.7 million. That is what a gold correction looks like inside a company’s accounts, and it is the clearest single illustration on this page of why the cushion question matters now.

The macro case. Single asset, single country. Ecuador has been a workable jurisdiction for Lundin Gold but concentration is concentration, and there is no second mine to absorb a problem at the first. Against that, the company declared dividends of $1.08 per share for the third quarter, which is a substantial distribution and a sign of genuine confidence in the cash generation.

The technical picture and the precedent. Lundin Gold closed October 9 above both averages, 3.5% over its 50-day and 1.3% over its 200-day, while the 50-day still sits 2.2% under the 200-day. On unadjusted closes that is a death cross regime dating from May 20, and the gap is narrow enough that the cross back is close. On dividend-adjusted closes it has already printed, on October 9 itself, which is the one name on this page where the two bases disagree about the regime. The precedent is the most striking here: twenty-five golden crosses across the full history produced a median 90-day total return of -11.8%, while the twenty-six death crosses produced +10.8%. Lundin Gold is the best-performing stock in this group over a decade, up roughly twentyfold, and sixteen of its twenty-five golden crosses were followed by a loss over the next ninety days. If you take one thing from the technical sections on this page, make it that one. Its chart is TSX:LUG on TradingView.

4. DPM Metals (TSX:DPM): the only one that got cheaper

DPM Metals, formerly Dundee Precious Metals, is the name most conspicuously absent from competing lists, and on this page’s criterion it is the most interesting company in Canadian gold right now.

It kept 72.3 cents of every gold dollar. More importantly, it is the only company in this group whose cost per ounce fell. All-in sustaining cost per gold equivalent ounce sold came in at $1,214, down 6.0% from $1,292 a year earlier, against a peer group where the increases ran from +10.8% to +55.1%.

The rest of the quarter matches. Revenue rose 94% to $361.5 million. Adjusted net earnings rose 141% to $210.8 million, or $0.95 per share. Free cash flow rose 140% to a record $227.3 million, of which the company returned $57.6 million to shareholders through dividends and buybacks. It finished the quarter with $761.2 million in cash and an undrawn $400 million credit facility.

A caveat we would rather state than bury: DPM’s gold equivalent ounces now include a large and growing amount of silver from Vareš in Bosnia, where silver revenue jumped from $1.6 million to $73.3 million year over year. Comparing its all-in sustaining cost per gold equivalent ounce to a pure gold miner’s cost per gold ounce is therefore not perfectly like-for-like, and the company itself changed the basis of this metric from “per ounce of gold sold” to “per gold equivalent ounce sold” when Vareš came online. DPM is a precious metals company, not a gold company, and you are buying silver alongside the gold.

The macro case. Bulgaria and Bosnia are the operating jurisdictions, which is an unfamiliar risk profile for most Canadian investors and the likeliest reason the market has been slow to it. Vareš reaching its 850,000 tonne per year run rate by the end of 2026 is the swing factor.

The technical picture and the precedent. DPM closed October 9 15.0% above its 200-day average and 2.3% under its 50-day, with the 50-day well clear of the 200-day. Its golden cross regime has been open since March 2024, the longest on this page, and the stock is up more than fivefold inside it. Twenty-three golden crosses across the full history produced a median 90-day total return of +10.2%, still the best golden cross median in the group, ranging from -39.7% to +71.6%, with fifteen of twenty-three positive. The twenty-three death crosses produced +8.0%. That is directional rather than predictive, and we would not buy on it alone, but it is at least consistent with the fundamentals for once. Its chart is TSX:DPM on TradingView.

5. Agnico Eagle Mines (TSX:AEM): the one that turns margin into cash

Agnico kept 67.5 cents of every gold dollar, which places it fifth. On the measure that the margin rule is a proxy for, it is first by a distance.

Agnico generated $1.335 billion of free cash flow in a single quarter, nearly twice the next largest, Kinross at $726.8 million. Revenue rose 35.0% to $3.80 billion, net income was $1.60 billion, and adjusted earnings came to $3.07 per share. Its cost increase of 13.9% was among the more modest here.

Production of 855,816 ounces was actually slightly lower than a year earlier, at 866,029. Agnico did not grow its way to those results. It received a much higher price and kept its costs in check while most of its peers did not.

The macro case. Agnico is the highest-quality jurisdiction profile in large-cap gold: Canada, Australia, Finland and Mexico, with the Abitibi belt in Quebec and Ontario at its core. That is the reason it trades at a premium to Barrick and Kinross, and in a world where resource nationalism is the live risk in the sector, it is a premium with a rationale behind it.

The technical picture and the precedent. Agnico closed October 9 above both averages, 1.2% over its 50-day and 2.8% over its 200-day, and its death cross has closed, with a golden cross printed on October 6. Twenty-five golden crosses across the full history produced a median 90-day total return of +1.9% and the twenty-five death crosses +4.0%, with fourteen of twenty-five goldens positive against fourteen of twenty-five deaths. Both are close to zero and the death cross is marginally ahead, so neither should drive a decision here. Its chart is TSX:AEM on TradingView.

6. Alamos Gold (TSX:AGI): a good margin and a guidance problem

Alamos received the highest realized price of any company here, $4,504 per ounce, and kept 61.6 cents of it. Revenue rose 35.6% to $594.1 million, free cash flow rose 70% to $143.5 million, and the company returned $67 million to shareholders in the quarter.

The complication is operational. All-in sustaining cost rose 16.7% to $1,728 per ounce sold, and gold production fell from 137,200 ounces to 130,600 as Mulatos and Young-Davidson underperformed. The Island Gold district delivered record underground mining and milling rates and carried the quarter. A company with three producing assets where one is excellent and two are struggling is a different proposition from one where all three are fine, and the market has treated it accordingly.

The macro case. Canada and Mexico. The Island Gold expansion is the growth story and it is progressing. Alamos is the clearest example on this page of a company whose fundamentals and whose cost trend point in opposite directions.

The technical picture and the precedent. Alamos closed October 9 below both averages, 2.2% under its 50-day and 12.8% under its 200-day, and has been in a death cross regime since June 26. It is one of three names here trading below its long-term average. The crossover record is no outlier either: seventeen golden crosses across the full history produced a median 90-day total return of -1.4%, ranging from -42.2% to +65.8%, with eight of seventeen positive, and the sixteen death crosses produced +6.3%. Its chart is TSX:AGI on TradingView.

7. Kinross Gold (TSX:K): strong cash, rising costs

Kinross kept 59.4 cents of every gold dollar, and converted that into $726.8 million of attributable free cash flow on $2.24 billion of revenue, a conversion rate second only to Agnico among the miners here. Adjusted earnings were $0.71 per share.

The pressure point is cost. All-in sustaining cost rose 22.0% to $1,821 per gold equivalent ounce sold from $1,493, one of the larger increases in the group, while attributable production slipped from 512,574 ounces to 492,326.

One point of arithmetic worth flagging, because it is the kind of thing that produces wrong comparisons: Kinross reports a “margin per ounce” of $3,131 in its own release. That figure subtracts production cost of sales of $1,352, not all-in sustaining cost of $1,821. Both are the company’s real numbers and neither is wrong. This page uses all-in sustaining cost for every miner so the comparison holds, which is why our figure for Kinross is $2,662 rather than $3,131.

The macro case. Kinross has a broader and more mixed jurisdiction profile than Agnico, with material exposure in Mauritania, Brazil and Chile alongside the United States and Canada. Tasiast and Paracatu are the assets that matter.

The technical picture and the precedent. Kinross closed October 9 12.2% under its 50-day and 16.9% under its 200-day, the furthest below both averages of any name here, in a death cross regime dating from June 26. Fourteen golden crosses across the full history produced a median 90-day total return of -10.4%, with five of fourteen positive, and the fourteen death crosses produced -6.5%. Both medians are negative, which is unusual on this page and worth noting rather than explaining away: the signal has not worked in either direction in this name. Its chart is TSX:K on TradingView.

8. Barrick Mining (TSX:ABX): the biggest, and the least of it reaches shareholders

Barrick is the largest company on this page by revenue at $5.29 billion in the quarter, up 44%. It kept 57.8 cents of every gold dollar, and its cost increase of 10.8% was the second lowest in the group, a figure the company states itself as “up 11% compared to Q2 2025”.

And its attributable free cash flow was $141 million. On $5.29 billion of revenue. That is the lowest cash conversion of any profitable company here, and it is the single most important thing to understand about Barrick right now.

The reason is capital spending on growth, principally Reko Diq in Pakistan and the Lumwana expansion in Zambia. Those are genuine assets being built, not waste, and in time they should produce. But a shareholder buying Barrick today for gold price exposure is also buying a very large construction programme in two difficult jurisdictions, funded out of the cash flow that a higher gold price is generating. Barrick is also a substantial copper producer, with 56 thousand tonnes attributable in the quarter, so it is not a pure gold company in any case.

A naming note. Barrick Gold Corporation became Barrick Mining Corporation and began trading under the new name on May 9, 2025, when its New York ticker changed from GOLD to B. The Toronto ticker remains ABX. The company set all of this out in its name change announcement of May 6, 2025. If you are looking at older research, that is the same company.

The technical picture and the precedent. Barrick closed October 9 below both averages, 2.0% under its 50-day and 1.1% under its 200-day, with the 50-day only 0.9% above the 200-day after a golden cross printed on October 5. Twenty-seven golden crosses across the full history, the largest sample on this page, produced a median 90-day total return of -0.9%, with thirteen of twenty-seven positive, and the twenty-seven death crosses produced +3.0%. On that sample the golden cross is a coin flip that leans slightly the wrong way. Its chart is TSX:ABX on TradingView.

9. IAMGOLD (TSX:IMG): the highest cost, and the turnaround it is funding

IAMGOLD kept 48.2 cents of every gold dollar, the thinnest margin of any company ranked here. Its all-in sustaining cost of $2,271 per ounce sold is the highest in the group, which means gold only has to fall 46% rather than 72% before its sustaining costs are not covered.

The counterweight is that the business is working. Revenue rose 47.5% to $856.9 million, adjusted net earnings more than tripled to $241.6 million, and mine-site free cash flow was $368.9 million. Attributable production was 188,100 ounces, with Côté Gold in Ontario contributing 67,300 attributable ounces and the company on track for full-year guidance of 720,000 to 820,000 ounces.

The macro case. Côté is the whole thesis. It is a large, long-life Canadian asset still ramping, and its unit costs should fall as it does. Against that, Essakane in Burkina Faso is a genuine jurisdiction risk that has become more acute across the Sahel, and Westwood is expensive at $2,163 per ounce.

IAMGOLD ranks ninth on the margin measure and is the highest-risk name here that we would still hold. If gold stays near current levels it should do well. If gold falls another 30%, this is the company on the list that feels it first.

The technical picture and the precedent. IAMGOLD closed October 9 above both averages, 0.2% over its 50-day and 5.5% over its 200-day, in a golden cross regime that printed on September 22. Its crossover record is among the widest in the group: twenty-five golden crosses with a median 90-day total return of -7.8% and a range from -47.5% to +77.5%, only eight of them positive, and twenty-four death crosses at +1.3% ranging from -52.1% to +32.1%. The dispersion is enormous and the golden cross median is firmly negative, which is a fair description of the stock itself. Its chart is TSX:IMG on TradingView.

10. Eldorado Gold (TSX:ELD): a decent margin, and cash going out the door

Eldorado kept 56.0 cents of every gold dollar, which on the raw measure would place it eighth. It is ranked tenth because of the free cash flow override, and its case is the clearest illustration of why that rule exists.

Eldorado’s free cash flow in the quarter was negative $334.1 million, and negative $463.2 million for the first half. Excluding spending on Skouries in Greece and McIlvenna Bay, free cash flow was positive $40.9 million. The company is spending far more than it generates to build a large copper-gold mine.

That is not automatically bad. Skouries is a real asset and a genuine growth project. But it means a shareholder buying Eldorado for gold exposure is buying a development company that also produces gold, and the margin measure this page ranks on does not capture that at all. All-in sustaining cost deliberately excludes growth capital. If a page ranked on that number alone, Eldorado would look safer than it is.

The operating quarter was also weak in its own right. Gold production fell 21.8% from 133,769 ounces to 104,616, and gold sold fell from 131,489 to 102,691. Revenue rose only 7.9% to $487.5 million in a quarter when the gold price it received was 34% higher than a year earlier. All-in sustaining cost rose 26.7% to $1,926 per ounce.

The macro case. Greece and Turkey, with Skouries as the swing factor. Eldorado has recovered from losses in 2021 and 2022 and the earnings trajectory is genuinely good. It is the highest-variance name that we still rank.

The technical picture and the precedent. Eldorado closed October 9 4.6% above its 200-day average and 5.7% under its 50-day, in a golden cross regime that printed on September 1. Twenty-one golden crosses across the full history produced a median 90-day total return of +2.4%, with a range from -43.5% to +124.5% and eleven of twenty-one positive. Twenty-two death crosses produced -5.0%, ranging from -58.7% to +114.4%. Note the ranges rather than the medians. Both signals have produced 40% losses and 100% gains in this stock, which tells you the medians are close to meaningless and the stock moves on its own news. Its chart is TSX:ELD on TradingView.

That is the ten. If you have decided which of them you want, all of them trade on the Toronto Stock Exchange in Canadian dollars.

Open a Questrade account to buy them on the TSX

Why B2Gold Came Off This List

B2Gold was on the previous version of this page. It is not ranked now, and the reason is worth more than a line, because it is the best single demonstration of why realized price belongs in this calculation.

In the second quarter of 2026, B2Gold’s average realized gold price was $3,767 per ounce. Every other company on this page realized between $4,359 and $4,504. That is $592 an ounce below the cheapest realization among the ten ranked names and $654 below their average, on 209,537 ounces sold, and it has nothing to do with the market. B2Gold was completing the final deliveries into its gold prepay contracts, which it confirms in its own release, selling ounces at prices agreed when gold was much lower.

Combine that with the highest cost increase in the group, an all-in sustaining cost of $2,356 per ounce sold against $1,519 a year earlier, up 55.1%, and the margin collapses. B2Gold kept 37.5 cents of every gold dollar. The next worst kept 48.2.

The financial statements say the same thing more bluntly. Adjusted net income fell 75% to $40.9 million from $162.8 million. Adjusted earnings per share fell from $0.12 to $0.03. Cash used by operating activities was negative $78.8 million, and free cash flow was negative $257.5 million.

Headline net income was $419.6 million and up 161%, which looks excellent until you notice it includes a $292.4 million gain on the sale of mining interests, the Fingold stake sold to Agnico Eagle. Strip that disposal gain out and the underlying quarter is the weakest here.

The case for B2Gold from this point is that the prepay contracts are now finished, so future ounces sell at the market price, and management expects significant free cash flow in the second half. That may well happen. But this page ranks on what the filings show, not on what is expected, and on the quarter that has been reported B2Gold does not earn a place in the top ten. We will revisit it when there is a clean quarter to judge.

Names That Left the Market Entirely

Two changes that older gold lists have not caught up with.

New Gold no longer exists as a listed company. New Gold Inc. completed a plan of arrangement with Coeur Mining on March 20, 2026. New Gold shareholders received 0.4959 Coeur shares for each New Gold share, and the shares were delisted from the Toronto Stock Exchange and NYSE American shortly afterward, as set out in New Gold’s own completion announcement. Any list still carrying NGD as a Canadian gold pick is recommending something you cannot buy.

Barrick Gold is Barrick Mining. As noted above, the name and the New York ticker changed on May 9, 2025. The TSX ticker did not.

This pattern is not unique to gold. Consolidation has been running hard across Canadian resources, and we found the same thing when we rebuilt the Canadian energy stocks page, where four producers had left the TSX in eighteen months. If you are working from a list more than a year old, check that the companies still trade before you check anything else.

Honorable Mentions, and Why They Are Not Ranked

Ten ranked names is a choice, and several Canadian companies have a reasonable claim to a place. Here is what we looked at and why each is not ranked.

Wesdome Gold Mines (TSX:WDO) has the third-best ten-year return of any Canadian gold equity we measured, up 1,157% to September 11, 2026 against gold’s 234.3%, from two Canadian mines at Eagle River and Kiena. It reports in Canadian dollars with US dollar conversions, and every one of the ten ranked above reports in US dollars. This page ranks on realized price minus all-in sustaining cost per ounce, divided by the realized price, with all amounts on the same currency basis. A converted cost is not that measurement, and placing one beside ten that are would make the ranking look more precise than it is.

Triple Flag Precious Metals (TSX:TFPM) is a royalty company in the same mould as Franco-Nevada and Wheaton, and the market data supports the family resemblance: a beta to gold of 0.92, the lowest of any name we measured, and the shallowest maximum drawdown at 35.4%. It listed in 2021, so it has about five years of trading history rather than ten, and any comparison of its returns against the names above would not be like-for-like. That shorter record, not the business, is why it sits here.

Torex Gold (TSX:TXG), Centerra Gold (TSX:CG) and SSR Mining (TSX:SSRM) are all real producers with real assets. Each carries either a single-jurisdiction concentration or a recent operational disruption that made a clean margin comparison against the ten above harder to justify in one quarter’s data.

Osisko Gold Royalties (TSX:OR) is the third Canadian royalty company of scale. Its beta to gold of 1.20 is notably higher than Franco-Nevada’s or Triple Flag’s, which is worth knowing if you are buying royalty companies specifically for the lower volatility that Franco-Nevada and Triple Flag deliver.

Equinox Gold (TSX:EQX) carries full miner leverage with an ordinary amount of gold inside it. Its beta to front-month gold over the ten years to October 9, 2026 is 1.58, and gold explains 26.3% of its daily variance, a little below the 29% median of the eighteen Canadian gold and silver stocks we measured. The leverage is real in both directions: its daily moves carry a standard deviation of 3.3% against 1.8% for Franco-Nevada, and its 80.5% fall from August 2020 to November 2022 is the fourth deepest of those eighteen, behind only Eldorado, IAMGOLD and SSR Mining.

Correction, October 14, 2026: an earlier version of this paragraph put gold at 2.0% of Equinox’s daily variance and concluded that the stock almost never moves for the reason gold moves. One session in that window, October 7, 2016, carries a 569% gain in the price history, against a next-largest move of 41% anywhere in eleven years of it, and it was that record rather than Equinox’s behaviour that produced the 2.0%. The window the figures above use begins after that session, and gold explains 26.3%. The conclusion the 2.0% supported does not stand.

What About Gold and Silver Together?

Several of the names above are not pure gold companies, and if silver is part of what you want, it is worth knowing which ones already give it to you.

Wheaton Precious Metals has substantial silver streams alongside gold, which is a large part of why its cash cost per gold equivalent ounce moved as much as it did this quarter. DPM Metals has become a genuine silver producer through Vareš, where silver revenue went from $1.6 million to $73.3 million year over year. Franco-Nevada sold 19,695 silver gold equivalent ounces in the quarter alongside 91,224 of gold, plus platinum group metals and a diversified segment.

What Canada does not really offer at scale is a large, liquid, silver-primary producer to sit beside these. If silver specifically is the objective rather than precious metals generally, the practical routes are a silver ETF or the streaming companies above, which is a less satisfying answer than a stock pick but a more accurate one.

What Changed in This Update

This page was last rebuilt in August 2026, and enough has changed to be worth listing.

• The ranking criterion changed. The previous version ranked on a mix of quality and narrative. This one ranks on a single computed measure, the share of each gold dollar kept, taken from each company’s own second-quarter 2026 filing.
• B2Gold came off the list, on the numbers set out above.
• DPM Metals was added, and ranks fourth. It was not on the previous version at all, despite being the only company in the group whose costs fell.
• Every figure was re-sourced from primary filings. Company financials now come from earnings releases, management’s discussion and analysis and financial statements, with the document named, rather than from any aggregator.
• The gold price context inverted. The previous version was written into a rising gold market. Gold peaked on January 29, 2026 and has fallen 20.7% since, which is why cost structure now carries the ranking.
• New Gold was removed from consideration entirely, because it no longer trades.

Are Canadian Gold Stocks a Buy Right Now?

The honest answer depends on a view you have to form yourself, and the useful thing this page can do is tell you what you are actually buying at each level of the list.

The case for. Gold at $4,216.30 is roughly 28% above where it averaged in the second quarter of 2025, and every company here is enormously more profitable than it was two years ago. Central bank buying and persistent deficits are the structural arguments and they have not changed. Meanwhile the equities have corrected further than the metal. At the October 9 close all ten ranked names traded below their own 52-week highs, from 8.9% at Franco-Nevada to 38.0% at Alamos Gold, with a median of 20.2%.

The case against. Gold has fallen 20.7% in eight months, it is now below every one of the ten ranked companies’ realized prices, and the cost side has not adjusted. Every company on this page that reports a comparable cost figure, except DPM Metals, reported higher costs per ounce than a year earlier, with increases from 10.8% to 55.1%. That is the sector spending its windfall. If gold simply stays where it is, margins compress from both ends.

What the middle looks like. This is exactly why the ranking is built the way it is. If you think gold goes higher, the operating leverage in IAMGOLD or Eldorado will pay more than Franco-Nevada will. If you think gold drifts or falls, that same leverage works against you and the top of this list is where you want to be. The ranking is not a prediction about gold. It is a measure of how much each business depends on gold behaving.

One thing we would not do is treat a gold allocation as a substitute for thinking about the rest of a portfolio. Gold stocks are a sector bet inside Canadian equities, and if this is your first sector position it is worth reading our guide to what moves a stock price and to the difference between a correction and a bear market first, because a 21% drawdown in the underlying commodity is the kind of move that flushes out people who had not decided in advance what they would do about it.

Are Gold Miners Actually Leveraged to Gold?

Gold mining equities are sold on a simple idea: because a miner’s costs are roughly fixed, a rise in the gold price flows disproportionately to profit, so the stock should move more than the metal. It is a sound idea in theory. We measured it.

We regressed ten years of daily returns for each of these companies on the daily return of front-month COMEX gold, through to September 11, 2026, using 2,460 overlapping trading sessions.

The leverage is real. Nine of the ten have a beta to gold above 1.0, ranging up to 1.84 for IAMGOLD. Franco-Nevada, at 0.96, is the single exception, which is exactly what the royalty model predicts: it is the only one of the ten that does not move more than the metal.

But gold explains remarkably little of what these stocks do day to day. The highest reading in the group is Agnico Eagle, where gold explains 40.6% of daily variance. The lowest among the ranked names is Lundin Gold at 25.5%. Across the whole universe we measured, the median was around 30%.

Put plainly: roughly seven-tenths of the variation in a Canadian gold stock’s daily moves has a source other than the gold price. It is grade, guidance, a permit, a jurisdiction, a share issue, or simply the broad equity market. Anyone buying a miner purely as a leveraged proxy for the metal is getting the leverage and a great deal of other risk they may not have priced.

There is a cleaner conclusion hiding in the same data. Over the ten years to September 11, 2026, front-month COMEX gold returned 234.3%. The S&P/TSX Global Gold Index ETF returned 330.1%. Lundin Gold returned 1,982%, DPM Metals 1,692% and Wesdome 1,157%. The dispersion between individual miners over a decade dwarfs the difference between owning gold and owning miners as a group. Selection matters far more here than the sector call does, which is the argument for reading the ten entries above rather than just the top of the list.

We looked at the same divergence from a different angle in our piece on why Canadian gold stocks have been beating gold this year.

What the Crossover Record Actually Shows

Because technical signals come up constantly in gold, we pooled every 50-day and 200-day moving average crossover across all ten ranked names over each one’s full listed history, the earliest starting in 1995. That is 204 golden crosses and 204 death crosses. An earlier version of this section published different numbers, and they were wrong for three reasons we have since fixed. The calculation ran over ten years rather than full history, and over that decade gold equities rose a great deal, so almost any signal that put you in the market looked good. Our own code also counted a crossover on the first day a 200-day average becomes computable, which invented one event in every name. And it reported a drawdown measured to the wrong point inside each regime. The full history, with all three corrected, is below, and it says something close to the opposite.

• Golden crosses: median 90-day total return -1.5%, positive 48.0% of the time.
• Death crosses: median 90-day total return +4.6%, positive 58.3% of the time.
• No signal at all: median 90-day total return +3.1%, positive 55.0% of the time, across every overlapping 90-session window in the same ten names.

The third line is what makes the other two readable. With no signal at all, a 90-day holding period in these ten names has a median total return of +3.1% and is positive 55.0% of the time, across all 67,937 overlapping windows in their full histories. So the golden cross, the signal that actually gets quoted, has done worse than simply being invested, and the death cross has done marginally better. Neither is a strategy, but only one of them is actively unhelpful. The same ordering holds company by company: the death cross has the higher median in eight of these ten companies, every one except DPM Metals and Eldorado.

A 6.1 percentage point gap in median 90-day return is not an edge to trade on in the other direction either. Ten gold equities cross over inside the same gold cycles and each name’s 90-day windows overlap one another, so 204 events are nowhere near 204 independent trials, and we have run no significance test on them. What the pooled record does not support is the claim the golden cross is usually made with. It has not been a reliable entry in this sector, and in the single best-performing stock in the group, Lundin Gold, the golden cross has a negative median 90-day return across twenty-five occurrences. The record does not support the story, so the record is what we report.

At the October 9, 2026 close seven of these ten names sit in a golden cross regime and three in a death cross, and six of those seven regimes began on or after September 1, two of them inside the last week: Agnico Eagle crossed over on October 6 and Barrick on October 5. Price is a separate question, and here it is weaker: only three of the ten close above both their averages, four sit between them and three are below both. Fresh crossovers under a soft price are what the end of a correction looks like when it is still in doubt, and on the record above they are not a reason to act.

What Are Gold Stocks?

A gold stock is a share in a company whose revenue depends on the price of gold. There are four distinct kinds and they behave very differently.

Producers operate mines and sell gold. Agnico Eagle, Barrick, Kinross, Alamos, Eldorado, IAMGOLD and Lundin Gold are all producers. Their profit is the gold price minus their cost per ounce, which is the calculation this entire page is built on.

Royalty and streaming companies finance mines in exchange for a share of production at a fixed price. Franco-Nevada and Wheaton Precious Metals are the two large Canadian examples. They have far higher margins and far lower operating risk, and they capture less of an upside move.

Developers and explorers own deposits that are not yet mines. They have no revenue, they fund themselves by issuing shares, and they are the highest-risk end of the sector. None are ranked here. If that end interests you, several trade at very low prices and we cover the mechanics of that segment on our Canadian penny stocks page, with the strong caveat that most of them never build anything.

Gold ETFs hold either bullion or a basket of mining shares. They are covered in their own section below.

The broader set of Canadian miners, including copper, uranium and diversified names, sits on our Canadian mining stocks page. Several companies appear on both lists, because Barrick is a serious copper producer and DPM is a serious silver producer, and treating either as purely a gold company would be a mistake.

Gold Miners vs Royalty Companies: Which Should You Buy?

This page produces an unusually clear answer to a question that is normally argued on vibes, so it is worth setting out directly.

Royalty companies keep far more of each dollar. Franco-Nevada kept 92.1% and Wheaton 87.2%, against a miner range of 48.2% to 73.0%. That is not a small edge. It is a different business model.

Royalty companies survive a falling gold price far longer. Gold would need to fall 92% before Franco-Nevada’s cash cost exceeded what it receives per ounce. For IAMGOLD the figure is 46%.

Miners give you more upside when gold rises. The beta measurements above show it: most miners move 1.3 to 1.8 times gold, while Franco-Nevada moves 0.96 times. In a strong gold market you will make more money in a miner, and probably in a high-cost miner.

Royalty companies still carry real risk, of a particular kind. Franco-Nevada’s 2023 loss on Cobre Panama is the counterexample, and it is a structural one. A royalty holder cannot fix an operational or political problem at a mine it does not run. It can only write the asset down.

The practical resolution for most people is that the royalty companies are the core holding and the miners are the expression of a view. If you have no strong view on the gold price, the top of this list is where the risk-adjusted case is strongest. If you have a strong bullish view, you are being paid to take the operating leverage further down.

Gold ETFs: The One-Decision Alternative

If choosing between ten companies is not appealing, a gold ETF does the job in one trade.

There are two quite different things sold under the same label. Bullion ETFs hold physical gold and track the metal, so you get gold’s return with no company risk and no leverage. Miner ETFs hold a basket of mining shares, and give you the sector’s dispersion without requiring you to pick within it.

The relevant comparison from the data on this page: over the ten years to September 11, 2026, front-month COMEX gold returned 234.3% and the S&P/TSX Global Gold Index ETF returned 330.1%. The miner basket beat the metal over that decade. It also fell 44.6% peak to trough along the way, against a shallower path for gold itself. That is the trade in one line.

An ETF also solves a problem this page cannot solve for you, which is that the worst outcome in this sector is usually concentration in a single name that has a single problem. We rank the best Canadian ETFs on how much of their index return actually reaches unitholders, which is the same kind of question this page asks of miners.

Which Accounts Should Hold Gold Stocks?

Gold stocks have an unusual tax profile for Canadian investors and the account choice genuinely matters.

TFSA. Most of these companies pay little or no dividend, so nearly all of the return is a capital gain. A TFSA shelters that gain entirely, which makes it the strongest account for the higher-variance names on this list. There is no foreign withholding issue because all of them are Canadian companies trading in Toronto. Our TFSA stock rankings cover the broader question of what belongs in that account.

RRSP. Fine, and it defers the gain, but an RRSP’s particular advantage is recovering US withholding tax on US-listed dividend payers, and that advantage is wasted on a Canadian miner that pays no dividend. If you have limited RRSP room, there are better uses for it, which we work through on the RRSP stocks page.

Non-registered. Half of a capital gain is taxable at your marginal rate, and you only pay when you sell. For a long-term hold that is not a punitive outcome. You will need to track your adjusted cost base carefully, particularly if you buy in tranches or receive shares through a corporate action like the Coeur arrangement described above. Our adjusted cost base calculator handles the arithmetic, and the capital gains tax calculator estimates what you would owe.

A note on dividends. Lundin Gold and DPM Metals both pay meaningful distributions, and Lundin Gold declared $1.08 per share for the third quarter of 2026. Those are eligible Canadian dividends and receive the dividend tax credit in a non-registered account. If income is the point of the position rather than gold exposure, our dividend income calculator is the quicker way to size it.

FAQ: Canadian Gold Stocks

What is the best Canadian gold stock right now? On the measure this page uses, the share of each gold dollar kept, Franco-Nevada ranks first at 92.1% and Agnico Eagle is the best of the operating miners on cash generation, producing $1.335 billion of free cash flow in the second quarter of 2026. They answer different questions. Franco-Nevada is the most durable; Agnico is the highest-quality miner; DPM Metals is the only company in the group whose costs fell.

How far can gold fall before these companies stop making money? It varies enormously. Using each company’s own second-quarter 2026 cost per ounce, gold could fall 92% from $4,216.30 before Franco-Nevada’s costs exceeded its receipts, 65% for Agnico Eagle, and 46% for IAMGOLD. Those figures use all-in sustaining cost, which excludes growth capital, taxes and financing, so they mark the point at which the existing operation stops covering itself rather than the point of insolvency.

Why is gold down if it is supposed to be a safe haven? Gold peaked at $5,318 an ounce on January 29, 2026 and has fallen 20.7% since. A safe-haven asset is not a rising asset. Gold rose very sharply through 2025 and the first month of 2026, and what has followed is a correction from that level rather than a repudiation of the case for owning it.

Are gold stocks better than owning gold? Over the ten years to September 11, 2026, front-month COMEX gold returned 234.3% and the S&P/TSX Global Gold Index ETF returned 330.1%, so the miners won. The dispersion between individual miners was far larger than that gap, with the best performer up nearly twentyfold and several others up less than gold. Miners add operating leverage and company-specific risk in both directions.

Do Canadian gold stocks pay dividends? Some do, and most pay very little. Lundin Gold declared $1.08 per share for the third quarter of 2026, and DPM Metals declared $0.04 per share alongside $48.8 million of buybacks in the second quarter. The large producers generally prioritise reinvestment and buybacks over yield, so gold is rarely a sensible choice if income is the primary objective.

Is B2Gold a bad company? No, and that is not what the analysis above says. B2Gold had a poor quarter because it was delivering the last of its gold prepay contracts at prices agreed when gold was much lower, which cost it $592 an ounce against the cheapest of its peers, and because its costs rose 55.1% year over year. Those prepay contracts are now complete. It is off the ranked list because this page ranks on reported results, and we will reassess after a clean quarter.

What happened to New Gold? New Gold Inc. completed a plan of arrangement with Coeur Mining on March 20, 2026. Shareholders received 0.4959 Coeur shares per New Gold share and the stock was delisted from the TSX and NYSE American. It can no longer be bought as a Canadian gold stock.

Should I buy gold miners in a TFSA or an RRSP? A TFSA, in most cases. These are Canadian companies paying little or no dividend, so the return arrives as a capital gain, which a TFSA shelters completely. An RRSP’s distinctive benefit is recovering the 15% US withholding tax on US dividend payers, and that benefit does nothing for a Canadian miner.

Bottom Line

Gold has fallen 20.7% from its January peak, it trades below all ten of the ranked companies’ realized prices, and every one of these companies except DPM Metals is more expensive to run than it was a year ago. That combination is the reason to stop ranking gold stocks by how many ounces they produce.

What separates them now is how much of each gold dollar reaches the business, and the spread is far wider than most investors assume: 92.1 cents at Franco-Nevada, 67.5 at Agnico Eagle, 48.2 at IAMGOLD and 37.5 at B2Gold, which is why B2Gold is no longer on the list. The royalty companies win that measure structurally, because they carry no mines and no sustaining capital, and that is the honest answer to the miners-versus-royalties argument rather than a matter of preference.

Two further things the filings say that the sector narrative does not. DPM Metals is the only company here whose cost per ounce fell, by 6.0%, and it was absent from this page entirely until now. And gold explains only about 30% of the daily movement in a typical Canadian gold stock, so the leverage you are buying comes bundled with a great deal of company-specific risk that has nothing to do with the metal.

If you want gold exposure with the least dependence on gold behaving, start at the top of this list. If you want the leverage, you can have it further down, and now you know precisely what you are paying for it.

Every company ranked above trades on the Toronto Stock Exchange in Canadian dollars, so a Canadian account buys any of them without a currency conversion. If you do not have one yet, you can open a Questrade account.

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Disclaimer: The content on bestcanadianstocks.ca is for informational and entertainment purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Always consult a qualified financial advisor before making investment decisions. Company figures from each company’s own Q2 2026 earnings release, MD&A or financial statements, as cited in the text. Gold and share prices are Yahoo Finance daily closes to October 9, 2026: gold is the December COMEX contract, and the moving averages, regimes and cross dates are read off unadjusted closes while the crossover return distributions use dividend-adjusted closes. The ten-year gold beta and decade-return figures are as at September 11, 2026, except the Equinox Gold regression, which is as at October 9, 2026 and is measured against the continuous front-month COMEX series.