Analysts at Jefferies initiated Barrick Gold with a buy on valuation, setting a price target of $65. Separately, Deutsche Bank cut their price target from $76 to $67 and now has a buy rating on the stock.

Shares of Barrick are trending up as shares of the mining companies are in a race to catch up with the gold prices.

Here is a list of gold stocks that are attractive to fund managers. AngloGold Ashanti is at top with 14 funds holding over $2B and Barrick comes second at $1.3B but the company is more popular among hedge fund managers. These data is as of March 31, 2011, courtesy of Insider Monkey, a good source for hedge fund information:

As the commodity gold has risen quickly, the gold mining stocks have languished. They took a dip downward with the killing of Bin Laden (less perceived risk) and the commodity sell off last week. The fundamentals and the technicals (charts) indicate that they may have upside both in the near term and in the longer term. One of the reasons these companies have languished is that they have been using a nominal value of $800/oz. for gold and $14/oz. for silver to evaluate their resources. If they adjusted these prices to ones closer to the current values, it would yield much higher NPVs. In addition, many of these companies are growing their reserves. For instance, Allied Nevada Gold (ANV) grew its gold reserves 101% to 16.1 million ounces and its silver reserves 131% to 598.1 million ounces since its previous estimate in August 2010. It has a cost of sales of $491/oz. of gold, but it estimates an achievable cost of sales of $304/oz. for gold in the near future.

Barrick Gold puts a bid for $7.3B Canadian dollars for copper producer Equinox Minerals at 30% premium at C$8.15 a share. The hostile bid tops earlier $C6.3 billion bid by Chinese miner Minmetals Resources.

Equinox copper mine in Lumwana, Zambia. The company said it would drop its earlier C$4.8 billion bid for Lundin Mining.

Newmont is at top of the gold mining companies who have highest cash. Calculated as Cash Equivalents (CE), the rankings are:

Gold miners are lagging the metal prices and are now catching up at full speed. GDX was up 3.6% while the metal gained 0.78%. NovaGold continued the uptrend. Among large caps, Barrick gained 3.60% and US Gold rose impressive 11.10%. Shares of miners will likely continue to climb but are nearing resistance areas.

Cramer reinstated his bullishness in NovaGold in his show and declared it "the greatest call on gold...this is the real deal."

The mining company is most levered to the price of gold, so investors who think gold is going to $2,000 should buy NovaGold. Although NovaGold was criticized for spurning a bid from Barrick (ABX), the company has doubled its reserves since the rejected bid and is in a profitable mining partnership with Barrick, a company with a "depth of knowledge and expertise," said CEO Rick Van Nieuwenhuyse.

Barrick Gold, the world's top producer of the yellow metal, insists the gold price is not in a bubble and sees “lots of room” for further price increases, CEO Aaron Regent said on Tuesday.

Gold hit its 16th record high in five weeks today on expectations that the Federal Reserve will further loosen monetary policy and print money. Investors find gold not only a dollar hedge but also an alternative currency.

The yellow metal reached an all time high of $1,374.80 an ounce but analysts caution investors of a possible correction.

Gold stocks rose with advances in metal prices. TD Newcrest raised Barrick Gold (ABX) target price from $59 to $61 based on higher expected gold production estimates.

Gold rose to $1,300 an ounce today but ended at $1,298.60 an ounce on the COMEX as traders are taking profit. The gold price chart suggests a short-term correction as prices have hit the physiological $1,300 level.

A correction gives an opportunity to get into long positions in gold mining stocks with less risk. Euro falls from a five-month low versus dollar.

LBMA forecasts gold above $1,400. Barrick gold predicts $1,500.