Given the large number of resource companies on AIM, it is little short of a miracle that the FTSE AIM All-Share index rose in 2015.
Read it and weep, blue-chip backers.
The AIM All-Share index ended 2014 at 702, and 2015 a fraction of a point short of 739, up 5.2% on the year. Meanwhile, the FTSE 100 AIM index rose 14.5%.
Over the same period the FTSE 100 fell 4.8%.
Even in bad years, it remains true that if you are looking to hit the ball out of the ground, you are far better off backing AIM shares than the blue-chips, and nothing illustrates that better than the fate of Watchstone Group (LON:WTG).
Back in the days when it was known as Quindell, it was a blue-chip but its fall from grace was spectacular; since it returned to the ranks of the tiddlers – its market capitalisation is around £140mln – under new management in slimmed down form, the share price recovery has been breathtaking.
The shares rose eightfold to 325p in 2015, helped, no doubt, by management's generosity in announcing plans to return 100p a share to shareholders following the disposal of its professional services division.
Surprisingly, it was not even the best performing stock on AIM in 2015. That accolade went to Pantheon Resources (LON:PANR), a US-focused oil junior that saw its shares rise 833%, with the lion's share of that rise coming after it revealed in late October that a new well in Texas flowed in excess of 1,500 barrels oil equivalent per day in testing.
The company’s 50% owned VOBM-1 well, in Polk County, Texas, was drilled into the Eagle Ford shale play and flowed at a rate of 6.2mln cubic feet of gas and 504 barrels of oil per day.
Pantheon added that the successful result indicates upside to the prior resource estimates for the project, which stood at 1.4mln barrels of oil equivalent.
In contrast, most of Tiziana Life Sciences' (LON:TILS) 337% improvement came in the first half of the year, after it licensed milciclib, a cancer treatment that is currently in phase II clinical trials for thymic carcinoma in patients previously treated with chemotherapy, from Nerviano Medical Sciences.
The cancer specialist only listed in April 2014 so investors who got in early doors have seen a very quick and very handsome return on their investment.
Another health-related stock that has come flying out of the traps is OptiBiotix Health (LON:OPTI), which rose 344% in 2015.
The company was only formed in March 2012 and only listed on AIM in August 2014, but the timing could not have been better, with the company's focus on measures to tackle obesity, cholesterol and diabetes set to address the main health issues of the developed world.
So, as you digest that last mince pie and contemplate one final flourish of over-indulgence over the year-end before the New Year's resolution to live more healthily kicks in, check out the company's technology, which essentially looks to alter the function of the human biome.
The company recently raised more money in the market to branch out into new areas, such as skincare, sweeteners, infections and wound care, where existing technologies do not meet existing needs.
If you despair of ever being a good enough – or lucky enough – stock-picker to identify a high performer such as OptiBiotix, you could just leave it to the professionals, such as Amphion Innovations (LON:AMP), the backer of high growth companies in the medical and technology sectors.
Amphion's shares rose 247% in 2015, spiking at the end of March and again in June, after one of its portfolio companies, Motif Bio (LON:MTFB) floated on AIM in April at 20p a share; Motif's shares were changing hands at twice that by the end of the year, after it received official meeting minutes from the US Food and Drugs Administration (FDA) confirming its approval for Phase III clinical development for Iclaprim, an antibiotic designed to be effective against resistant bacteria.
The success of companies such as these tends not to attract the attention of the proverbial man on the Clapham omnibus, but one of AIM's big risers this year, UK Oil & Gas (LON:UKOG), certainly had its share of the spotlight.
The shares soared 223% as the market speculated – sometimes wildly – about the potential of the Horse Hill asset located in the Weald basin in Surrey, not far from Gatwick airport.
UK Oil and Gas (LON:UKOG) has a 20% interest in Horse Hill Development Ltd, HHDL for short, a special purpose company that holds rights a 65% stake in the Horse Hill project.
It is the operator at the Horse Hill asset, popularly known as the 'Gatwick Gusher'.
It caused a furore in April after it claimed the Weald Basin may contain twice as much oil as already produced from the North Sea, making the claim after drilling one well at Horse Hill.
The company expects to conduct a flow test within the next few months and, if it goes well, there is every chance you will be reading about the company again in a very similar article to this at the end of 2016.