The world’s 50 most valuable mining stocks were worth $2.26 trillion at the close of September, a $264 billion monthly decline that is the second-largest in the history of Mining.com’s ranking. September took back three-quarters of August’s record $357 billion advance, and it did so for the same reason the gain arrived: gold. New York bullion futures slid from $4,441 an ounce at the end of August to $4,158 at the end of September, a 6.4 percent retreat. The macro worked against gold all month: the Federal Reserve raised rates for the first time since 2023 on September 16, a global bond selloff pushed yields to their highest since 2008, and the dollar firmed.
The gold miners that supplied $138 billion of August’s gain gave up $79 billion of it in September, a 12.7 percent fall across a sector that now counts fifteen companies, not one of them higher on the month. Newmont and Agnico Eagle both suffered double-digit billion-dollar damage, enough to push Agnico back below the $100 billion mark it had cleared only a month earlier. AngloGold Ashanti fell 16.4 percent and shed $9.4 billion.
The sharpest falls had company-specific causes stacked on top of the metal. Kinross lost 21.3 percent after cutting its 2026 and 2027 production guidance by about 8 percent from the midpoint, blaming winter storms at La Coipa in Chile and weaker grades at Round Mountain in Nevada. Shandong Gold fell 27.8 percent, the worst move in the ranking, after its board lowered the group’s 2026 mined-gold target to between 1.16 million and 1.22 million ounces from a plan of at least 1.58 million. Gold Fields lost 21 percent over the month, an $8.6 billion loss of market value, after its unsolicited A$38.7 billion ($27 billion) approach for Northern Star was rejected as “highly opportunistic” by the target’s board on September 28.
Copper’s producers lost $44 billion between them, a 7.6 percent fall, though the metal itself finished September at $6.56 a pound ($14,500 a tonne), three cents below where it began, after setting a fresh record mid-month. BHP suffered the largest dollar loss anywhere in the ranking, $26.4 billion or 11 percent, after a worker was killed at Escondida on September 23 and the world’s largest copper mine suspended operations, with supervisors voting for strike action in the same week. First Quantum fell 19.2 percent, almost all of it on the last day of the month, after a three-minister commission in Panama recommended the government negotiate a restart of Cobre Panama with termination of $27 billion in pending arbitration claims as a condition.
Lithium was the month’s worst-performing metal. Carbonate futures in Guangzhou fell 22.5 percent to 122,800 yuan ($18,300) a tonne, the lowest close since the first week of January, after a change in methodology at a Chinese price-reporting agency more than doubled reported stockpiles to 175,000 tonnes. Albemarle and Ganfeng Lithium each lost more than a fifth of their value in September, and three lithium producers in the August ranking are down to one: SQM, 17.9 percent lower itself. Two gold miners, Endeavour Mining and Alamos Gold, took lithium’s places.
Context keeps the month in proportion. September’s loss is the second-largest in a series running back to the end of 2019, behind only March’s $434 billion disappearance as gold fell from its record. Even so, the third quarter closed $107 billion higher than it opened, the ranking is worth $118 billion more than at the end of last year, and the fifty still sit at $2.26 trillion, 18 percent below the February record.