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by Will Purcell

The diamond and specialty minerals stocks box score on Friday was a ho-hum 77-78-155 as the TSX Venture Exchange rose one point to 580. Yes, here we go again. Late-to-arrive data forced New York-based diamond analyst, Paul Zimnisky, to nudge last week's setting of his global rough diamond price index lower by just 0.1 point, but new information has triggered a larger decline. And so, this week Mr. Zimnisky set his index at 139.3 points, a further drop of 0.8 point.

The index is therefore off 0.7 per cent on the week and is down nearly 2 per cent over the past month. In fact, other than a few sideways jogs, Mr. Zimnisky's chart traces a steady decline since prices hit a record high in mid-February of 2022. At the time, the index reached a lofty 207.3 points, and this week's fix is off some 67.4 points, a decline of 32.8 per cent over the past 29 months.

Mr. Zimnisky's long-term chart also traces a dreary pattern. Rough diamond prices hit a previous high just shy of the 200-point mark in the spring of 2011, as miners struggled to get their production back to where it was before the Great Recession hit late in 2008. By the early summer of 2014, prices had fallen significantly, and Mr. Zimnisky pegged his index near the 172-point mark -- low enough that diamond promoters were grousing about the state of the market, cheering that better days surely lay ahead.

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