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by Will Purcell

The diamond and specialty minerals stocks box score on Friday was an anemic 81-87-142 as the TSX Venture Exchange fell 1.36 points to 610.32. Adam Lundin and Eira Thomas's Lucara Diamond Corp. (LUC) rose one cent to 45 cents on 207,000 shares and Dermot Desmond's Mountain Province Diamonds Inc. (MPVD) lost one cent to 44.5 cents on 95,000 shares.

Both companies are diamond successes in that they moved from junior explorers to significant diamond producers in the mid-2010s, thanks to support in part from well-heeled backers. Still, given how things turned out in the diamond sector, the Lundin family and Mr. Desmond may well wish they had put their money into something -- almost anything else.

Rough diamond prices edged lower again this week, according to Paul Zimnisky's global rough diamond price index, which suffered a 0.3 per cent drop this week, one of its larger weekly declines since prices hit an all-time high in early 2022. For a time, it looked like the slide from that high, which reached 13.3 per cent during the first week of 2023, was over. Unfortunately, a subsequent rally sputtered out in early March and that 3-per-cent recovery has all but disappeared.

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