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by Will Purcell

The diamond and specialty minerals stocks box score for Wednesday was a weak 42-64-160 as the TSX Venture Exchange fell one point to 782. Polished diamond prices slipped slightly and the weakening rough market had investors jittery today. Robert Gannicott's Dominion Diamond Corp. (DDC) slid 52 cents to $16.35 on 302,000 shares. Dominion has improved production at Ekati and Diavik, and has new developments slated to come on stream in a few years. Still, investors recall how quickly the company's fortunes fell in 2008 when rough diamond prices imploded. Robin Goad's Fortune Minerals Ltd. (FT) lost one-half cent to 17 cents on 6.56 million shares. Mr. Goad says Fortune's NICO project in the Northwest Territories is "uniquely positioned" to be a supplier of bismuth, cobalt, gold and copper. He will first have to position nearly $600-million in cash into Fortune's coffers to build the mine.

Patrick Power and Buddy Doyle's Arctic Star Exploration Corp. (ADD), unchanged at four cents on 21,000 shares, has acquired 54,000 hectares of ground immediately east of the Ekati property and immediately north of Diavik, at Lac de Gras. De Beers acquired what Mr. Power now calls his T-Rex property in the early 1990s, during the tumultuous days following the Dia Met Minerals Ltd. discovery of the Point Lake kimberlite. De Beers subsequently found a cluster of kimberlites, from George in the southeast to Hardy Lake in the northwest, by drilling magnetic targets on its property. None of them warranted a closer look but Mr. Power nevertheless reminds investors that T-Rex "covers 13 known kimberlites."

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