Silver miners underperforming silver bullion?

As is demonstrated in several articles (1), gold mining majors don’t offer any leverage over gold bullion. Outperformance during gold rallies is largely undone by major swoons during gold retreats. The return for your bravery when investing in gold mining majors is merely additional volatility and underperformance over the long haul. But what about silver miners? Do we observe something similar?

Marcel Thirylaan: Double and Quit ?

Het is niet ongewoon dat de koers van een liquidatie-vehikel zeer sterk fluctueert. Sinds de uitkering van de eerste vereffening eind november 2010 (€45.27), hoort Marcel Thirylaan tot deze categorie. De activa bestaan uit een ingehouden bedrag op het liquidatiesaldo. Na de verkoop van het gebouw (zie ook: Kogel  door de kerk) is de opbrengst van het erfpachtrecht uitgekeerd aan de certificaathouders. Overige rechten (meer dan €300.000) zijn ingehouden om de lopende gerechtelijke geschillen te kunnen bekostigen. De mogelijke inkomsten daarvan kunnen de activa verveelvoudigen.

GDXJ or GLDX, what to choose in the Gold Exploring Realm?

Note: the ticker of the Global-X Gold Explorer ETF has changed to GOEX in 2016.

Decades of underperformance

Gold investors may not like this, but the main Gold & Silver miners index, that has been around for a while, exhibits decades of underperformance.
The gold miners index most referenced now is the "Unhedged Gold Bugs index" with ticker ^HUI. You can find data on Yahoo going back to 1996 for this index. However the Philadelphia Gold & Silver Miners index (ticker ^XAU) goes back way before this. Yahoo posts XAU data from 1983 onwards, but the index may be older than that. One main difference between the two is the inclusion of Freeport McMoran in the Philadelphia Gold & Silver Miners index, with a heavy weight of about 13%.
Recently I've focussed on how the HUI does outperform bullion during the gold rallies, but still fails to catch up since it fell into the abyss back in October 2008. See: Did you say leverage?
As for now I will focus on the Philadelphia Gold & Silver Miners index, abbreviated XAU henceforth.