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by Will Purcell

The diamond and specialty minerals stocks box score on Friday was an upbeat 113-77-120 as the TSX Venture Exchange rose 10 points to 581. Polished diamond prices continue to fall, dropping 0.1 per cent in the past week and continuing a 20-per-cent slide that began in early March. Jewellers' woes bode ill for diamond miners and indeed, rough diamond prices have resumed their now 46-week-long decline from an all-time high reached in mid-February.

Rough prices fell 0.3 per cent this week and are now 12.4 per cent lower than their high, according to Paul Zimnisky's global rough diamond price index, arguably the best gauge of how the diamond sector is performing. The good news is that the decline has lessened since early fall, but prices are nevertheless 1.2 per cent lower now than then, despite the added demand generated through the holiday season.

And so, despite 2022 being a year of record high rough diamond prices, the year goes in the books with prices 4.4 per cent lower at the end of the year than at its start. Last year began with miners enjoying a strong tailwind at their backs, thanks to the overexuberant bubble that capped a nearly two-year-long rally -- a rally that began once the diamond sector gradually reopened after a COVID-19 lockdown in the spring of 2020.

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