Gold stocks slide as bullion drops below $1,500/oz

TORONTO (Reuters) - Shares of North America's gold miners slid on Friday as the spot price of bullion dropped more than 4 percent, falling below $1,500 an ounce to its lowest point since July 2011.

Gold touched a low of $1,493.35, more than 20 percent below its record peak in September 2011, weighed down in part by a draft plan for Cyprus to sell bullion, and outflows from exchange-traded gold funds.

"Gold is getting hit hard, and gold miners are getting hit hard too," said Salman Partners analyst David West.

The S&P/TSX Global Gold index<.SPTTGD> was down 4.4 percent by midday. The index is down more than 25 percent since the end of last year and the sector is the worst year-to-date performer on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

 

Barrick Gold , the world's top gold producer, fell 4.7 percent to C$23.83 in Toronto, and Goldcorp Inc dropped 3.6 percent to C$30.37.

Smaller rival Kinross Gold Corp was down 6.0 percent at C$6.39, and U.S.-based Newmont Mining Corp fell 5.0 percent to $36.73 in New York.

Gold miners' stocks are typically more volatile than the price of the commodity itself, because their profit margins are leveraged to the gold price - a one percent drop in gold reduces profits by more than one percent.

(Reporting by Allison Martell; Editing by Jeffrey Hodgson and Chizu Nomiyama)