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by Will Purcell

The diamond and specialty minerals stocks box score on Friday was a positive 84-70-156 as the TSX Venture Exchange rose five points to 585. There was no news today from Canada's few remaining diamond miners and explorers. Dermot Desmond's Mountain Province Diamonds Inc. (MPVD), which continues to struggle along in silence, set a record low of 15 cents, ending the day down one cent to 16 cents on 550,000 shares today.

Once again, there is no rest for the diamond weary. Investors, promoters and analysts with an interest in gems were disappointed again this week with the latest setting of Paul Zimnisky's global rough diamond price index. While the market bemoaned last week's fix at 142.2 points, it turns out that the value was artificially inflated. Once late-to-arrive data appeared -- Mr. Zimnisky is fastidious about correcting his chart -- the value dropped to 141.2 points, peeling away a full point.

The chart then went from bad to worse, with the application of current pricing data. Mr. Zimnisky subtracted another 0.4 point this week, leaving the index at 140.8 points, a drop of 1.0 per cent from where we thought prices were a week earlier. The past three months show a ragged but essentially steady decline of about 5.5 per cent -- an annualized rate topping 16 per cent -- a downward trek that is as steep as they have come over the past 26 months since Mr. Zimnisky had set his index at 207.3 points, an all-time high.

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