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by Will Purcell

The diamond and specialty minerals stocks box score on Friday was a mediocre 69-80-161 as the TSX Venture Exchange lost eight points to 585. The tide may have turned, as Paul Zimnisky's global rough diamond price index has posted its second weekly increase after months of declines. The latest fix came in at 137.1 points, adding 0.8 point to last week's unadjusted setting of 136.3 points. (Mr. Zimnisky amended his chart to accommodate late-to-arrive data, but if there were any, they did not affect the chart.)

And so, the latest period of price stability has now run for seven weeks as depicted by a dashed line on Mr. Zimnisky's chart. This is his third such depiction: The first, drawn at 153 points late last year, faltered when diamond miners resumed sales once a two-month moratorium on purchases in India ended. A new trench was dug at about 149 points and although it held until early spring, a five-month slump then peeled off another 13 points.

Rough diamond prices are now 70.2 points below their record high of 207.3 points, set in early 2022 -- a 33.9-per-cent decline that has stripped the last hints of optimism from retail diamond investors. Put another way, Mr. Zimnisky says that current prices are 20.5 per cent lower than they were a decade ago, when his index sat at 172.5 points.

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