(This is The Best Stocks in the Market , brought to you by Josh Brown and Sean Russo of Ritholtz Wealth Management.) I pitched Newmont Mining (NEM) to the Halftime Report audience as a Best Stock in the Market name on April 17th . Instead of talking about it, I should have just shut my fat mouth and bought the stock. It’s up almost 70% since then. This is the best year for gold, silver and even copper mining stocks I can remember and I’ve been doing this a long time. Many of the names we’re going to tell you about have been on our list for the majority of the year. It won’t last forever, but if you believe gold prices will continue to rise, these are the names you’ll want to keep on your radar. I can’t tell you I like the set-up in Newmont today with the stock having gone parabolic in just the last week or so: It’s become an Empire State Building stock and these types of trades can become hazardous to your health if you’re late. NEM is now 65% above its 200-day simple moving average and 20% above its 50-day. Read up on it and wait for a bad stretch in the metals market. They’ll bring this one back to earth eventually. They always do. I like it in the mid-80s if it can hold that level and consolidate the YTD gains for a while. We will revisit. Sean is going to walk you through the sector’s Best Stocks fundamentally and I’ll be back with a set-up I prefer. Best Stock Spotlight: Metals stocks Sean – If the year ended today, gold would be up 60% making this the best year for gold since 1979. That’s a big reason why the metals and mining industry is working well. Anything touching precious metals this year is red hot. Silver may usually be thought of as a runner-up prize, but not this year: it’s up 84% in 2025. Metals and mining is the best industry group in the stock market, up an incredible 91%. It’s hard to find an asset outperforming this industry in 2025, which is why the gold bugs are so vocal this year. Gold and silver have surged with a mix of tailwinds pushing prices higher. Central bank demand, dollar weakness, and geopolitical tension are the largest themes for gold and silver in 2025. Let’s check in on the few names we have on the Best Stocks list that deal in precious metals. Those names are SCCO, AU, and NEM. These stocks have gone gangbusters this year. SCCO is up 49% YTD, while NEM is up 151% and AU is up 226%. Southern Copper Corp (SCCO): One of the world’s largest copper producers, benefiting from strong global demand and tight supply driven by electrification and infrastructure spending. SCCO expects 16% EPS growth this year. AngloGold Ashanti (AU): A global gold miner with operations across Africa and the Americas, leveraged to rising gold prices and improving cost controls. AU is the fastest earnings grower for 2025, with 157% growth in EPS expected this year. AUs previous earnings call saw free cash flow growth of 149% while free cash flow margin improved from 16% to 28% for the quarter. Newmont Corporation (NEM): The world’s largest gold mining company, offering diversified production and cash flow sensitivity to higher gold prices. NEM expects 76% EPS growth year-over-year for the upcoming quarter reporting next week. As of the companies last quarter, the all-in costs for the firm to mine gold was $1,593 per oz – or about $2,600 cheaper than the current price of gold. Risk management Josh — Southern Copper looks just as extended as I told you Newmont was so we’ll put a pin in that one. I would like to share some information on the third name, AngloGold Ashanti, which has a kickass ticker symbol (AU) and a great story about why the name could continue to remain under accumulation. Up until this year, Anglogold Ashanti was considered a risky foreign issuer from South Africa with an erratic history of disappointing capital returns to its shareholders. In 2023, before the current bull market in gold became a big story, they completely overhauled the legal and organizational structure that had held the stock back from being more widely held in the United States. AngloGold’s multi-year corporate relocation and index-eligibility overhaul was a game-changer. Two years ago, the company moved its domicile from South Africa to the United Kingdom, forming AngloGold Ashanti plc as the new parent entity and establishing a primary listing on the NYSE under ticker AU (they are still maintaining Johannesburg and Ghana secondary listings). This re-domiciling made the company eligible for inclusion in U.S. equity benchmarks for the first time. Following FTSE Russell’s country-assignment review in April 2025, AngloGold was classified within the U.S. equity universe and subsequently added to the Russell 3000 and related sub-indexes (including the Russell Midcap) during the June 30th reconstitution this summer. The move marks the company’s full integration into global index systems and broadens its investor exposure, as passive U.S. index funds and ETFs now automatically hold AU shares for the first time. Now, the investor community is forced to pay attention to this company. Earlier this year, AU unveiled a revamped dividend policy designed to align shareholder payouts more directly with free cash flow while ensuring a consistent base return. No more surprises (or, at least, big surprises) for shareholders. Under the new framework, the company will distribute 50% of free cash flow to shareholders through dividends, with a minimum annual base payout of 50 cents per share, paid quarterly even in lower-profit periods (like when gold’s price is weak). This replaces the prior, more variable approach tied to 20% of free cash flow, which had resulted in uneven distributions across commodity cycles. Management emphasized that the updated policy reflects “stronger balance sheet flexibility, reduced net debt, and a commitment to return capital” as the company transitions into a more geographically diversified, investment-grade gold producer with a larger institutional investor base. The goal is to create a reliable, transparent capital-return framework comparable to global mining peers such as Barrick and Newmont, while still allowing upside participation in strong gold-price environments. AU is not nearly as extended as the others on our Best Stocks list and is now in the process of consolidating its gains with a little sideways action as buyers and sellers demonstrate indecision. Perfectly normal. If you’re bullish on gold and want to play it through the equity market, I’m blessing this one with a trailing stop at the rising 50-day simple moving average. As you can see above, that 50-day has been extraordinarily supportive since January with every potential break below resolving to the upside. If the buyers don’t come in on the next test, that’s your sign to move along and do something else. Until then, I think you can own it. DISCLOSURES: (None) All opinions expressed by the CNBC Pro contributors are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of CNBC, NBC UNIVERSAL, their parent company or affiliates, and may have been previously disseminated by them on television, radio, internet or another medium. 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Gold stocks look way stretched following a parabolic run. But Josh Brown sees one that can be bought
