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by Will Purcell

The diamond and specialty minerals stocks box score on Friday was a ho-hum 71-85-154 as the TSX Venture Exchange rose fractionally to 591. Yes, the surge higher was a short-lived one, as Paul Zimnisky has lowered this week's setting of his global rough diamond price index, but the trend is staying flat. That, given the nearly three years of doom and gloom preceding the flattish stretch, is encouraging.

Mr. Zimnisky did not adjust last week's setting to account for tardy data, so the 0.6-point decline this week is a current trend that wipes away half of last week's 1.2-point surge. Nevertheless, the horizontal dashed line that Mr. Zimnisky scratched across the right side of his chart amplifies the picture of stability that began 14 weeks ago. And so, while the one-week trend shows a 0.4-per-cent drop in rough prices, the chart also shows a 0.4-per-cent gain over the past month and a 0.2-per-cent rise over the past three months.

Beyond that, there is little change in scenery across the longer term -- just as one would expect while traversing an endless steppe. Rough diamond prices are down 34 per cent from their record high set in early 2022, and they are off 20.6 per cent from a decade ago, when Mr. Zimnisky had his index near the 172-point mark. (Yes, prices are barely below the 138.5 points at which the index hovered in November of 2019, but remember that costs were significantly lower back then.)

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