By February 2007, Barrick announced it would eliminate all non-project related hedge contracts, but retain 9.5 million ounces of project-related gold forward sales contracts.

that's how barrick misled people two years ago. they announced with great fanfare that they had closed out their hedges, but they did it in a carefully crafted weasel-worded statement which only applied to existing production. they still had (and do have) 9.5 million ounces hedged against the pascua-lama project which only recently received approval, and is a long way from pouring its first ounce. that project is way up in the mountains straddling the argentina-chile border, so they had to deal with two governments, and barrick may yet have a technical difficulty or two on the way to production.

i think everyone but jon nadler sees the new barrick development as extremely bullish for gold despite the poor performance today.