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by Will Purcell

The diamond and specialty minerals stocks box score for Monday was a sad 24-73-168 as the TSX Venture Exchange slumped another 22 points to a close of 679.83, below the 2008 closing low of 684.31. Today's intraday low was 678.64, slightly higher than 2008's 678.62. (Long gone but fondly recalled is the resource sector boom that pushed the index to 3,372 in early 2007.) Polished diamond prices fell 0.1 per cent and are off 6 per cent since summer. Nevertheless, diamond analysts still predict prices will do well next year, the latest being Investec Securities analyst, Marc Elliot. Analysts have predicted a quick doubling of diamond prices since the early 2000s, a forecast they stuck to during the late 2000s recession that cut prices in half. Matt Manson's Stornoway Diamond Corp. (SWY) lost one-half cent to 49.5 cents on 1.20 million shares. The company is building Quebec's first diamond mine at Renard, in the Otish Mountains district. James Clucas's Search Minerals Inc. (SMY) closed unchanged at three cents on 560,000 shares. After a yearlong break through which it chased Brazilian tin, Search has resumed work on its Foxtrot rare earth play in Quebec.

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