Gold Mining Winners & Losers: Hecla Mining

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Gold mining stocks lost ground Thursday, tracking the price of the precious metal into the red.

Some of the inflation-fear heat that has spurred gold prices above $1,000 an ounce appeared to lessen in light of Wednesday's consumer-price data, which showed that inflation hasn't yet flared.

In trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange Thursday, the gold futures contract fell $5.50, or 0.54%, to $1,014.70 a troy ounce.

Thursday's trading action follows three days of presentations by gold-company executives at the annual Denver Gold Forum. Perhaps not surprisingly, given gold's recent spike above the psychologically rich $1,000 level, the tone of the conference was upbeat, participants say.

Even though inflation fears appear to have subsided at least a little, the bullish argument for gold and gold stocks rests on several factors, including what many expect to be some net buying by central banks in the near future. That should offset weaker physical demand for the metal among jewelers worldwide.

Some analysts believe gold stocks are reasonably well priced for investors to use as a way to diversify their portfolios.

But from a fundamental perspective, gold prices need to go higher still before miners (and their shareholders) see absolute share-price appreciation, says Mark Liinamaa, metals analyst at Morgan Stanley(MS Quote). For that to happen, he added, inflation worries need to take hold more strongly.