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by Will Purcell

The diamond and specialty minerals stocks box score on Monday was a positive 90-68-152 as the TSX Venture Exchange jumped 13 points to 707. Ewan Mason's Star Diamond Corp. (DIAM) rose one-half cent to 5.5 cents on 689,000 shares. Investors seem resigned to a glacial flow of news from the company. At least Mr. Mason is not musing about a stock consolidation.

Share consolidations are needed -- so the promotional pitch goes -- so that companies can raise cash to advance their projects and boost their share price. The aid to financing a company is unclear, but a rollback more often than not just gives a stock more room to fall. That has been the case so far with Jason Gigliotti's Sienna Resources Inc. (SIEN), which consolidated 1:10 in mid-May, elevating its then two-cent stock to 20 cents.

Sienna got as high as 21 cents before gravity grabbed it a few days later, and the placement the company proposed late last week is not helping its cause: The plan calls for Sienna to sell 4.76 million shares at just 10.5 cents apiece. (Each share is accompanied by warrants, and those warrants are exercisable at just 14 cents over a five-year period.) And so, Sienna has been drifting earthward with renewed vigor. It added one-half cent to 14.5 cents on 11,000 shares today.

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