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by Will Purcell

The diamond and specialty minerals stocks box score on Friday was a 90-90-130 draw as the TSX Venture Exchange fell eight points to 607. Rough diamond prices inched higher this week, adding 0.2 per cent according to Paul Zimnisky's global rough diamond price index. The modest upward jog, one of just a few evident on the chart since rough hit an all-time high in mid-February, does little to alter the pattern of a gradual decline in prices. Rough prices fell about 4 per cent in value in the late winter and early spring, but the decline has been modest, although consistent since then.

The drop, now 5 per cent below the record high, flies in the face of expectations fuelled by improving demand and dwindling supply -- then exacerbated by sanctions against Russia's state-controlled diamond company, Alrosa, which accounts for a big chunk of global production. As a result, any move to fire up the diamond price escalators, so prevalent through the 2010s, which called for prices to outstrip inflation by 2-to-5 per cent annually, seems as prone to failure now as before.

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