uchuck: Duh, What's Up?The Globe and Mail reports in its Tuesday edition the world's top gold miners are forging ahead with expansion plans and higher dividend payments, despite worries that bullion is bound for a correction. The Globe's Brenda Bouw writes that companies are vowing to tackle the issue of share values that lag gold prices. Executives believe that the price of gold will continue to rise and that equities will soon catch up and could even surpass physical gold in returns to investors. "I do think the equities will respond," Barrick Gold Corp. chief executive office Aaron Regent told investors at the Denver Gold Show in Colorado Springs, Colo., on Monday. "The equities have not reflected the strong fundamentals of the underlying businesses." Gold stocks have been underperforming compared with the price of gold in part because of the rise in exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that allow investors to buy into physical gold. That has drawn attention away from gold mining stocks, which are a wider bet on exploration and production of the precious metal. For example, gold has risen 28 per cent so far this year, while shares of many mining companies have remained relatively flat or declined over the same period.