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by Will Purcell

The diamond and specialty minerals stocks box score for Friday was a so-so 73-70-134. The TSX Venture Exchange rose two points to 712 while polished diamond prices fell 0.1 per cent. Matt Manson's Stornoway Diamond Corp. (SWY), unchanged at 34 cents on 232,000 shares, hit a new nine-year low of 33 cents today. The stock has not been lower since the dark days of late 2008, when it dipped as low as 22 cents. Since then, the company has built an $800-million diamond mine at Renard and has been producing diamonds since mid-2016. Unfortunately, the company's average rough diamond prices are well short of projections.

Dermot Desmond's Mountain Province Diamonds Inc. (MPVD), down seven cents to $2.43 on 325,000 shares, has wrapped up its seventh sale of rough this year. The company sold 411,317 carats of diamonds from its 49-per-cent interest in the Gahcho Kue mine, 250 kilometres northeast of Yellowknife, for $26.9-million (U.S.); an average of $65 (U.S.) per carat. Stuart Brown, president and chief executive officer, said that this was "a pleasing result," considering the time of year and the diamonds on offer. (If the poor diamonds had ears, they would be burning. There was no concern about a seasonal lull in the diamond industry last year, when Mountain Province accelerated the sale of lower-quality goods into its seventh sale of 2017.)

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