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by Will Purcell

The diamond and specialty minerals stocks box score on Friday was an upbeat 96-76-136 as the TSX Venture Exchange fell one point to 584. The decline in rough diamond prices grew stronger with another passing week. New York-based diamond analyst, Paul Zimnisky, has set his global rough diamond price index 0.5 per cent lower, putting it down nearly a full percentage point in the past fortnight.

While the rate of decline falls well short of the seemingly relentless 3-per-cent-per-month increase that saw prices leap from their pandemic lows to an all-time high in the span of less than two years, the listless meandering now is reminiscent of the decade-long pattern that prevailed after a similar surge that followed the Great Recession. Prices are now 5.2 per cent below the mid-February high, a chart crag that eclipsed a similarly sharp peak in the spring of 2011.

The good news is that prices remain about 25 per cent higher than they were in the summer of 2017, which is also where they were in the summer of 2012. Keeping up with inflation is arguably a not-so-bad situation to be in, one might argue, although analysts, promoters and diamantaires had been unanimous in cheering predictions that rough prices would outstrip inflation by between 2 and 3 per cent each year.

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