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by Will Purcell

The diamond and specialty minerals stocks box score for Tuesday was a weak 45-62-140. The TSX Venture Exchange fell two points to 696 while polished diamond prices gained 0.3 per cent. Robert Gannicott's Dominion Diamond Corp. (DDC) fell 59 cents to $23.30 on 382,000 shares. The company will pay its first dividend in seven years, a 40-U.S.-cent payment, in two weeks. Dominion's acting CEO, Brendan Bell, has already laid out a payment schedule for two subsequent semi-annual 20-U.S.-cent "sustainable" dividends in the coming year. Bruce Curling and Charles Needham's Alphamin Resources Corp. (AFM) gained one cent to 25 cents on 2.69 million shares. There was no news to account for the activity, which was mainly the result of a flurry of late morning buys of 2.63 million shares by an institutional broker, Instinet. Alphamin hopes to mine a high-grade tin deposit at Bisie in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Grenville Thomas and Ken Armstrong's North Arrow Minerals Inc. (NAR) fell 11 cents to $1.03 on 246,000 shares on its final diamond counts from a 1,353-tonne bulk sample of its Q1-4 kimberlite at Qilalugaq, a property just north of Repulse Bay in central Nunavut. The test produced 384.28 carats, a grade of 0.28 carat per tonne. That is roughly half the estimated 0.54-carat-per-tonne grade of an inferred resource and an associated additional 14.1 million to 16.6 million tonnes deemed a target for further exploration. Such a result would normally be a huge disappointment, but Mr. Armstrong, president and CEO, reminded investors that "it is important to note that this point-source sample was not intended to confirm the overall diamond grade" of Q1-4.

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