Gold and silver haven’t made any progress for over a month now, and stocks in general have been in the doldrums, but precious metal producers have been earning money hand over fist, and their stocks have found some much-deserved traction.

From our index comparison page, here is a chart showing the outperfomance of gold producers (green) and silver producers (lavender) when compared to base metal producers (blue), which are more sensitive to economic downturns.

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Checking out the Solid Gold Miners list in Editors’ Picks, I see that even big miners like Newmont, Kinross, Newcrest, IAMGOLD, Centerra, Barrick and African Barrick are trading at 15x operating cash flow or less, even with their stocks way up. Going by 2011 cash flow, these figures are going to look even better, particularly for miners with a heavy silver component, as silver is much higher this year than last.

Just a quick post on this sunny Friday afternoon in August…

Check out this divergence over the last three months between our gold producers index and platinum group index, as the gold price has risen to meet platinum. If this spread returns to more normal levels through a rise in platinum, we could see that index catch up.

Tip: compare any group of our mining stock indices here.

In what has been a sideways market for most commodities, prices of titanium dioxide (TiO2 aka rutile) have doubled in private trading this year. Contracts are being settled in excess of $2500 per metric ton, up from $700 last year and $400 a few years ago. This pure white powder is favored as a color base for paints, pigments, plastics and high-quality paper, and supplies are very tight.

There are very few primary titanium producers or explorers, but two small-caps stand out in our database: White Mountain Titanium (WMTM on the OTCBB), with an advanced-stage exploration project in Chile, and Sierra Rutile (SRX on AIM), with a producing mine in Sierra Leone.

Their stock prices have reflected the situation in the rutile market, as they have defied the malaise that has effected many resource stocks lately:

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Site Tip:  To search for just companies that focus on a particular mineral, or for which a single mineral accounts for the majority of their resource value, simply select “main mineral” in the drop-down filter on the filters page:

Our uranium index closed the week down (only) 20% after traders smelled opportunity in their decimated share prices. Buy when there’s blood in the streets, right?

Follow the daily chart here: http://miningalmanac.com/uranium-index

Chart of our uranium index:

http://miningalmanac.com/uranium-index

Our 1-day movers list is also dominated by uranium stocks falling on heavy volume:

http://miningalmanac.com/movers/volume

http://miningalmanac.com/movers/losers

Here’s the list of companies who’s resource, production and financial data we’ve just updated and put online in the past few days, bringing the running total to 550. We are also revealing full property-by-property tonnage & grade and production data for all companies later this week.