NEW YORK, December 29, 2025, 15:07 ET — Regular session
U.S.-listed shares of South Africa’s DRDGOLD Limited were down about 8.3% at $30.55 in afternoon trading on Monday, as gold-linked equities sold off. The stock opened at $31.37 and has traded between $30.25 and $33.15 so far in the session.
The slide mattered because gold miners often move more than the underlying metal. Their costs tend to be slow to change, so swings in the gold price can quickly reshape profit expectations.
That sensitivity comes into focus near year-end, when funds and commodity desks rebalance and lock in gains. Thin holiday trading can magnify price moves, especially after a strong run.
Spot gold fell 4.5% to $4,330.79 an ounce by 1:51 p.m. ET after hitting a record $4,549.71 on Friday, Reuters reported. “We are seeing profit-taking pullbacks off of those spectacularly high levels,” said David Meger, director of metals trading at High Ridge Futures, referring to selling to bank gains. Analysts also pointed to holiday-thinned trading and investors awaiting the Federal Reserve’s December meeting minutes for clues on interest-rate cuts, which tend to support gold because it pays no interest. 1
U.S.-listed peers fell alongside it. Gold Fields slipped about 7.0%, Harmony Gold fell 8.6% and AngloGold Ashanti dropped about 7.2%.
Investors often treat miners as a leveraged play on bullion: revenues move with the gold price, while many operating costs are fixed in the short term. That leverage works in reverse on down days, when margins can compress quickly.
DRDGOLD says it recovers gold by reprocessing tailings — leftover material from past mining — at its Ergo and Far West Gold Recoveries operations near Johannesburg. The company has marketed itself as a large-scale surface-retreatment specialist rather than a conventional underground miner. 2
Gold is widely viewed as a safe-haven asset, meaning investors often buy it when they want protection against economic or geopolitical shocks. The metal also tends to benefit when interest rates fall, because it does not generate interest income.
Traders will be watching whether bullion stabilises after the sharp pullback and how rate expectations shift once the Fed minutes land. Moves in the U.S. dollar and inflation-adjusted Treasury yields remain key cross-currents for the sector.
On the corporate calendar, DRDGOLD is due to release interim half-year results on Feb. 18, 2026, followed by full-year results on Aug. 19, according to its investor events calendar. 3
Those updates typically put production volumes, cash operating costs and capital spending plans under the microscope. Investors will also listen for any change in management’s assumptions on gold prices and operating conditions.
