Jesse Day's One Gold Stock: Why Agnico Eagle Is His Top Pick Among the Majors
Jesse Day argues gold miners have barely outperformed bullion despite record gold prices, making the majors attractive, and names Agnico Eagle as his top risk-reward pick. He cites a deep, collaborative management bench, says he bought shares recently, and believes the stock could double or triple over two to five years.
Investor angle
The video makes an opinion case for Agnico Eagle, not a numbers case. Day's thesis rests on management quality — a bench of CEO-capable executives, collaborative decisions, decades of discipline — combined with a sector-level discount: gold stocks barely outperforming the metal, per a gold-versus-NAV chart. His own behavior anchors the call: he bought recently, sat through a 16-17% drop into record Q1 earnings, and holds on a two-to-five year view targeting a double or triple. The evidence is anecdotal (reputation, boardroom culture, one purchase); the video offers no production, cost or balance-sheet figures for Agnico. Day's process notes: steady buying plus a cash reserve for drawdowns, and a preference for large producers over juniors to reduce company-specific risk.
If Jesse Day's mother asked him to name one gold stock to buy, he has a standing answer: Agnico Eagle. On The Deep Dive, the Commodity Culture host lays out why the major gold producer is his top risk-reward pick in the sector — and why he believes the whole group is unusually cheap after lagging a record gold price.
**The macro engine behind the call**
Day's argument starts with money creation rather than mining. He points to the Federal Reserve's Treasury bill holdings, flat at $195 billion for two years and now at roughly half a trillion dollars. Quantitative tightening (QT — the deliberate shrinking of the Fed's balance sheet) ended in December 2025, and the Fed's desk resumed buying bills within weeks. In his view, that quiet accumulation looks like a precursor to yield curve control, the policy the Bank of Japan used to hold borrowing costs down. Persistent deficits, debt issuance and war spending, he argues, leave policymakers one direction to go: more money chasing the same goods. That is the backdrop he says pushes him, and much of the mining-investor community, toward hard assets.
**Miners have not kept pace with gold**
Gold recently hit all-time highs, yet gold miners have barely outperformed the metal. Day notes that the GDX and SIL — exchange-traded funds tracking gold and silver miners — have beaten the metals themselves by only a small margin. Most investors would expect miners to deliver a bigger move than bullion in a gold bull market. That has not happened, and Day treats the gap as opportunity.
The host illustrates the point with a chart from Willem Middelkoop plotting the gold price against the sector's price-to-NAV multiple. NAV (net asset value) is, here, what a gold company's assets are worth based on their future cash flows, discounted to today. The ratio suggests gold stocks are cheap relative to what they own. The host cautions the measure is imperfect, because different analysts build NAVs on different gold price assumptions. Day's read is simple: "I do think this is an opportunity."
**Why Agnico Eagle, specifically**
Day describes himself as intensely focused on preservation of capital. He wants upside without a management team that "might do something stupid", and he argues Agnico Eagle has spent decades proving itself "the adults in the room".
His praise centers on depth and process. He relays that people who know the company describe a boardroom with roughly ten executives capable of serving as CEO in their own right, where decisions are collaborative and the due diligence before any move is, in his words, "next level". He contrasts that with an anecdote from fund manager Adrian Day about Barrick Gold under Mark Bristow, where one voice reportedly dominated the room for an hour. The host adds that many investors with deep sector knowledge call Agnico the best-managed gold company in the world.
**The trade — including the 16% drop**
Day says he bought Agnico Eagle recently, and the shares promptly fell 16-17%, right before the company reported record Q1 earnings — an outcome he calls "funny or tragic, depending on how you look at it". The drawdown did not shake the thesis. He bought the stock because he believes it could double or triple over two to five years, and he evaluates it on a three-to-five year horizon rather than trading swings.
His method pairs steady deployment with patience. He buys regularly, in the manner of dollar-cost averaging (investing fixed amounts on a schedule), while keeping a cash reserve for sharper declines. He says he still has cash on the sidelines and believes the current moment favors the gold and silver miners.
**Where this fits — and what the video does not cover**
Day frames this as opinion, not financial advice, and concedes he cannot predict share prices over the short term. He also places Agnico inside a broader group of large producers he finds attractive at these valuations — Newmont, Barrick, Agnico Eagle, Wheaton and Franco-Nevada — which he sees as a way to own the sector's biggest names while avoiding the hard-to-evaluate geology and economics of junior explorers and developers.
For investors, the video's case for Agnico Eagle rests on three legs: a money-creation backdrop that supports gold, a sector trading at a discount to the net asset value of what it owns, and a company Day rates as the most reliably run of the majors. The evidence for that third leg is anecdotal — reputation, boardroom culture and his own purchase. The discussion offers no production figures, costs or balance-sheet detail, so investors weighing the thesis would need to pair it with Agnico's actual operating record.
Generated by Pixys from the source video below. Not investment advice.
