Goldmining stocks are up about 20 per cent all told this year even though the overall market, with a few fits and starts along the way, has almost stayed put.
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One stock, Evolution Mining, is up 45 per cent.
It's not as if the gold price has done anything marvellous, either. It's climbed about 10 per cent over the same time, so why should the miners do twice as well? Especially when they've been trailing it for years?
A weaker dollar might explain it, only it's moved in the other direction. And since the Reserve Bank has given up talking it down, that's unlikely to change. No, it's that oldest market phenomenon of all: the miners were marked down so far they had nowhere to go but up.
Last year they had, with due deference to our visiting royals, an annus horribilis, with the biggest one, Newcrest Mining, down 55 per cent. At one point it had lost 80 per cent of its value from its peak three years ago.
But along with the other miners, Newcrest has been slashing costs, curtailing investment and closing unprofitable mines.
Better accounting standards have been adopted at the behest of the World Gold Council; not before time. These show a mine's real cost.
Lower production costs have changed the dynamics between goldmining stocks and their biggest rival, exchange traded bullion funds (ETFs) such as those carrying the ASX codes GOLD and PMGOLD.
These offer bullion untarnished by bad management, cost blow-outs, high debt, production issues or whatever else miners get up to. They're also immune from the vagaries of the sharemarket, even though they trade just like shares. Their value is always based, down to the last cent, on the Australian dollar gold price and nothing else.
So it's little wonder that ETFs have been luring investors away from gold stocks. But the miners' biggest advantage, indeed the only one for those not paying dividends, is suddenly compelling. They give leverage.
Every unit in an ETF represents one-tenth or even one-hundredth of an ounce of bullion but goldminers have hundreds or thousands extra ounces to play with. And the more gold a stock produces, the more valuable it is.
So if you're bullish on the gold price, you'll get more bang for your bullion from a goldminer.
Should you be? That might be going too far. But there's no need to be bearish either, because for the time being its biggest threat has gone to ground. And I don't mean Bitcoin, though that's laying low too.
No, that would be US government bond yields. When they rose last year, about 30 per cent of funds fled gold ETFs for the better - indeed guaranteed - return on bonds.
As those yields have fallen back, against all expectations incidentally, gold has picked up again.
And this time the smart money is going into stocks rather than ETFs. Billionaire fund manager and gold bug John Paulson, for instance, has been shifting out of ETFs into Dow-listed miners. The trouble is while gold looks like behaving, the same can't be said for the dollar.
Twitter: @moneypotts
