5 Top TSX Stocks of 2019

Towards the end of 2019, on the last Friday (December 29) of the year (and the decade), the TSX was trading at 17,152.73 — up from the 17,119.04 points it was at a week before and well above the 14,347.16 points the exchange was at on January 2 of this year. 

The exchange was coming up off a two year low at the start of the year, and it spent the rest of 2019 getting back to business, heading upward to close out the decade on a high.

With the TSX humming along in the final week of 2019, gold found itself steadying after hitting a two month high, while copper decided to end the year on a high as well.

The five top gainers on the TSX for the year were all across the gold and copper sectors:

• Balmoral Resources (TSX:BAR)
• Liberty Gold (TSX:LGD)
• Alacer Gold (TSX:ASR)
• Perseus Mining (TSX:PRU)
• Ero Copper (TSX:ERO)

Read on to find out about what each company has been doing to earn attention and how they all traded through the year.

Balmoral Resources

Year-to-date gain: 248.15 percent; current price: C$0.47

Balmoral Resources has a vast portfolio of gold and base metals properties located within the Abitibi greenstone belt in Quebec, including its flagship Detour gold trend project.

The Detour project has been the star of Balmoral’s 2019 news releases, with the Grasset deposit highlighted in its first news of the year. That said, the company did jump around, releasing updates on a variety of deposits; its interest narrowed down on gold deposits as the year wore on.

The company’s share price was flat through H1, but picked up in July and maintained an upward trend through to the end of the year, when it announced a C$4.55 million flow-through private placement to fund further exploration.

Liberty Gold

Year-to-date gain: 244.26 percent; current price: C$1.05

Liberty Gold has three core gold projects in Nevada, Idaho and Utah, which collectively fall within the Great Basin, where Liberty focuses its attention.

The project that got the most attention in 2019 was the Black Pine project in Idaho, where the company has been exploring two discoveries it made this year. It also announced the sale of interests in Turkey for US$4 million and the sale of one of its core projects, Kinsley in Nevada, in early December.

Liberty Gold’s share price started the year at C$0.31 and began to make steady gains as more updates came through about Black Pine drilling from July onwards.

Alacer Gold

Year-to-date gain: 170.63 percent; current price: C$6.82

Alacer Gold is a mid-tier gold producer with an 80 percent interest in the Turkish Çöpler gold mine. It also has a number of exploration projects that it hopes to focus on as Çöpler makes more money.

While the company has been trading upward consistently through the year, later in the year it announced significant discoveries adjacent to the Çöpler mine at the Ardich project.

Alacer began the year at C$2.44, and as mentioned has maintained a consistent upward trend in value through the year, peaking at C$7.56 in early December.

Perseus Mining

Year-to-date gain:145 percent; current price: C$0.98

Perseus Mining is an Australian gold-focused company that is dual listed on the ASX and the TSX. The company’s primary asset is its producing Edikan gold mine located in Ghana, though through the year news for the company was focused mainly on the development of its Yaouré project in Cote d’Ivoire. Perseus also owns an 86 percent share in the Sissingué gold mine in Côte d’Ivoire.

Perseus’ gains on the TSX were like many others on this list, with attention increasing around the middle of the year as interest in gold reached a fever pitch.

Ero Copper

Year-to-date gain: 138.53 percent; current price: C$23.40

The only non-gold-focused company on this list and also the highest valued, Ero Copper has operations in Brazil, where it has operational mines and development assets in copper-gold.

2019 was a solid year for the company, with Ero increasing its guidance for the year at the end of Q3 to between 40,000 and 42,000 metric tons of copper.

With interests in gold as well, Ero, like others on this list, saw an uptick in value in the middle of the year, though it fell away in Q3. The company’s 2019 high was in late July when it reached C$25.11 — not far above its current value of C$23.40.

Data for 5 Top TSX Stocks articles is retrieved each Friday at 10:30 a.m. PST using TradingView’s stock screener. Only companies with a market capitalization greater than C$50 million prior to the week’s gains are included. Companies within basic materials and energy sectors are considered.

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Securities Disclosure: I, Scott Tibballs, hold no direct investment interest in any company mentioned in this article.