In deconstructing what drove the returns of the Australian sharemarket over the last 12 months, one clear trend emerges: a shift in preferences from the virtual to the physical, and from intangible goodwill to hard assets.Here is the scorecard. If you put $100 into ASX mining stocks at the start of the year, that would be worth $146. If you’d invested the same amount in technology stocks instead, you would be down to $63 – a big $83 swing in favour of the diggers.Subscribe to gift this articleGift 5 articles to anyone you choose each month when you subscribe.Subscribe nowAlready a subscriber? Fetching latest articles