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by Will Purcell

The diamond and specialty minerals stocks box score on Friday was a mediocre 66-78-166 as the TSX Venture Exchange rose three points to 653. Rough diamond prices had an eventful yet flattish week despite more than the usual tinkering going into the latest setting of Paul Zimnisky's global rough diamond price index. The good news is that rough prices rose sufficiently this week that Mr. Zimnisky added 0.8 point, a gain of 0.7 per cent, to the index.

Unfortunately, late-to-arrive data over the past several weeks resulted in a lowering of recent settings. The lowering included a 1.3-point drop to last week's fix, so the current setting of 127.8 points is 0.5 point lower than where we thought it was a week ago. Nevertheless, the current value is essentially where Mr. Zimnisky had placed it five weeks ago, 3.5 points -- about 2.7 per cent -- above the multiyear low of 124.3 points in early February.

While the index has wandered a bit, it has remained essentially flat since early December. Indeed, Mr. Zimnisky's latest dashed horizontal line appears to be holding into its fourth month. Yes, his previous price plateau ran just as long -- and arguably longer -- but it was set along the 136-point mark, 11 points above his current metaphorical line of defence.

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