Canadian Gold Stocks: Ranked on Margin, Not Ounces
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Gold closed at $4,409 an ounce on September 11, 2026. That is a very large number by any historical standard, and it is also 17.1% below where gold traded on January 29 of this year. 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 seven 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 the eleven 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 17% move gold has made this year. 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 $4,409 to get there.
| # | 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 (-73%) | +26.9% |
| 4 | DPM Metals | DPM | $4,375 | $1,214 | 72.3% | $1,214 (-73%) | -6.0% |
| 5 | Agnico Eagle Mines | AEM | $4,483 | $1,459 | 67.5% | $1,459 (-67%) | +13.9% |
| 6 | Alamos Gold | AGI | $4,504 | $1,728 | 61.6% | $1,728 (-61%) | +16.7% |
| 7 | Kinross Gold | K | $4,483 | $1,821 | 59.4% | $1,821 (-59%) | +22.0% |
| 8 | Barrick Mining | ABX | $4,417 | $1,866 | 57.8% | $1,866 (-58%) | +10.8% |
| 9 | IAMGOLD | IMG | $4,384 | $2,271 | 48.2% | $2,271 (-48%) | +11.3% |
| 10 | Eldorado Gold | ELD | $4,379 | $1,926 | 56.0% | $1,926 (-56%) | +26.7% |
| out | B2Gold | BTO | $3,767 | $2,356 | 37.5% | $2,356 (-47%) | +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. As of September 11, 2026 Franco-Nevada traded above both its 50-day average of $325.51 and its 200-day of $323.06, with the 50-day above the 200-day. That is a golden cross regime, one of only four among these ten.
The precedent, computed. Across ten years there have been six golden crosses in Franco-Nevada. The median 90-day return afterwards was +0.2%, with a range from -18.1% to +11.6%. The five death crosses produced a median 90-day return of +4.8%. On a sample that small the honest conclusion is that the signal has told you nothing useful in this name, and it is worth saying so rather than quoting the one instance that flatters a thesis.
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 any company on this page. 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 September 11 above both moving averages, with the 50-day at $180.80 marginally above the 200-day at $180.06. Seven prior golden crosses produced a median 90-day return of +2.7% and ranged from -29.5% to +28.5%. The six death crosses produced a median of +10.1%. As with Franco-Nevada, the death cross has the better record, on samples of seven and six, which is to say the record is close to noise.
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 73% 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 above its 50-day of $87.02 but its 50-day sits just below its 200-day of $92.85, so it is technically in a death cross regime while trading above both. The precedent here is the most striking on the page: eight golden crosses over ten years produced a median 90-day return of -9.2%, while the seven death crosses produced +0.1%. Lundin Gold is the best-performing stock in this group over a decade, up roughly twentyfold, and buying it on its golden crosses would have lost you money in five of those eight cases. If you take one thing from the technical sections on this page, make it that one.
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 September 11 above both averages with the 50-day at $56.76 well above the 200-day at $49.66, the most clearly positive configuration of any name here. Eight golden crosses produced a median 90-day return of +12.8%, the best golden cross record in the group, ranging from -13.7% to +33.7%. The seven death crosses produced +3.3%. On eight observations 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.
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 above both averages, with the 50-day at $241.91 below the 200-day at $258.11, so it is in a death cross regime that price has already climbed out of. Seven golden crosses produced a median 90-day return of +8.6% and six death crosses +5.4%. Both positive, the golden cross better, and the gap is narrow enough on those sample sizes that it should not drive a decision.
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 is the weakest technical setup in the group. It closed September 11 at a level above its 50-day of $45.61 but below its 200-day of $54.06, one of only two names here trading below its long-term average. Its historical crossover record is the best of any name on the page, and the sample is the smallest: five golden crosses with a median 90-day return of +28.4%, four death crosses at +16.9%. Five observations is not a base rate. It is an anecdote with a number attached, and we are reporting it with the sample size precisely so it does not read as more than that.
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 above its 50-day of $37.48 and just below its 200-day of $40.83, the other name trading under its long-term average. It has the smallest event sample here: four golden crosses, median 90-day return +1.8%, and three death crosses at -3.7%. Four and three observations support no conclusion at all, and we are including the numbers only so the absence of a signal is visible rather than implied.
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 above both averages with the 50-day at $56.70 under the 200-day at $58.59. Six golden crosses produced a median 90-day return of +2.8%; five death crosses produced -3.3%. Weakly in favour of the golden cross, on six observations.
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 48% rather than 73% 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 above both averages with the 50-day at $24.42 just under the 200-day at $24.89. Its crossover record is the most violent in the group: eight golden crosses with a median 90-day return of -1.4% but a range from -44.9% to +49.5%, and seven death crosses at +2.3% ranging from -47.6% to +26.9%. The medians are close to zero and the dispersion is enormous, which is a fair description of the stock itself.
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 above both averages with the 50-day at $51.75 above the 200-day at $50.07, a golden cross regime. Six golden crosses produced a median 90-day return of +28.2%, the joint best here, with a range from -43.5% to +74.7%. Five death crosses produced +19.9%, ranging from -19.3% to +81.3%. Note the ranges rather than the medians. Both signals have produced 40% losses and 70% gains in this stock, which tells you the medians are close to meaningless and the stock moves on its own news.
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 What We Could Not Verify
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, including the cases where the reason is a gap in our own work rather than a judgement about the company.
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 is not ranked here for an honest reason: Wesdome reports in Canadian dollars with US dollar conversions, and the second-quarter cost figures we could find reported through third parties disagreed with each other by a wide margin. Rather than publish a margin we had not reconciled to the company’s own statements, we left it out. We will reconcile it directly from the filing and reassess.
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) produced the single strangest measurement in this exercise. Its beta to gold is 1.57, firmly in miner territory, but gold explains just 2.0% of its daily variance, against a group median near 30%. In plain terms, Equinox moves as much as a leveraged gold play and almost never for the reason a gold play moves. That is company-specific risk close to its pure form, and it is the clearest argument on this page against treating any single miner as a gold substitute.
We have logged Wesdome as an open item. A page that quietly dropped a top-three performer without saying why would be less useful than one that admits the gap.
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 17.1% 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 $4,409 is roughly 34% 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 alongside the metal, so you are not buying at the peak.
The case against. Gold has fallen 17.1% in seven months and the cost side has not adjusted. Every company on this page 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 17% 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 spot 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, spot 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 ten years. That is 65 golden crosses and 55 death crosses.
- Golden crosses: median 90-day return +6.5%, positive 58.5% of the time.
- Death crosses: median 90-day return +3.3%, positive 61.8% of the time.
The golden cross has the better median. The death cross has the better hit rate. Both are positive, largely because gold equities rose a great deal over the period, so a signal that put you in the market at almost any point looked good.
A 3.2 percentage point difference in median 90-day return, on samples of 65 and 55, in a sector that rose several hundred per cent, is not an edge you should trade on. We publish it because the alternative is publishing only the names where the signal happened to work, and because in the single best-performing stock in the group, Lundin Gold, the golden cross has a negative median 90-day return across eight occurrences. The record does not support the story, so the record is what we report.
As of September 11, 2026, six of these ten names sit in a death cross regime while eight of the ten trade above both their 50-day and 200-day averages. That combination is what a sharp recovery from a correction looks like before the long-term average has caught up, and it is worth understanding rather than reacting to.
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 48%.
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, spot 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 $4,409 before Franco-Nevada’s costs exceeded its receipts, 67% for Agnico Eagle, and 48% 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 17.1% 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, spot 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 17.1% from its January peak 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.
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 September 11, 2026.