Silver vs Silver miners ETF SIL

Here is a chart of the spot price of Silver vs the Global X Silver ETF SIL.  (Silver is the dotted line and SIL is the solid light green line).
You can see that they have tracked fairly close over the last 6 months up until the correction in January where the Silver miners declined much more than the Silver spot price.

Silver has started a reversal pattern to the upside starting in the last week of January and SIL has also reversed it's downtrend, but now has a 'gap' to fill. You can see the divergence in price start quickly right when the downswing started and there is still quite a large gap after the reversal to the upside. I expect this gap to fill and SIL gaining ground on Silver going forward. (What I think and what the market does are two different things).

Why do we have this divergence between the spot price of Silver and Silver miners? It looks like people are more interested in physical Silver over the Silver miners at this time. It is also easier for people in other countries to purchase physical Silver rather than a mining stock like SLW, PAAS, SSRI, SVM, HL, EXK, etc....

The Silver miners were selling near $30 an ounce for the 4th quarter of 2010, so their earnings should be very solid. This should boost the Silver stocks as a whole going towards the spring of 2011 and may fill the gap to the upside.

Disclosure: Long physical Silver and SIL.