The Mineral Drilling Sector Marches Up

Despite tanking gold and precious metals stock prices, the mineral drilling sector (represented by the DRILL index  - the line marked in violet) performs very well.

Last week it broke above an important resistance  level (the line marked in red) and continues marching up:

The green, dotted line represents the relative strength of the drilling sector against GDX. Since the beginning of the current bull phase in gold cycle the DRILL index has been much stronger than the precious metals sector itself.

However, as usually, the main question is "what is leading and what is lagging?"

In the past it was the drilling sector that was leading...