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by Will Purcell

The diamond and specialty minerals stocks box score on Friday was a positive 99-83-128 as the TSX Venture Exchange rose fractionally to 529. This is probably no surprise, but rough diamond prices have dropped again this week. Diamond analyst Paul Zimnisky has lowered his global rough diamond price index to 152.9, a 0.3-per-cent drop from last week's 153.3. (Sticklers for detail may object, noting that Mr. Zimnisky's previous setting had been 153.5, but remember that he readjusts recent data points to accommodate late-to-arrive information.)

With this week's decline, another in a seemingly unending string of weekly drops, rough prices are now 26.3 per cent below their all-time high of 207.2, set in February of 2022. And so, the post-COVID-19 price spike has been ground to a nub, leaving current prices essentially where they languished through most of the 2010s. Those were days when diamond promoters wailed about the sad state of the diamond exploration sector, and here we are, back again -- except that inflation has added between 25 to 40 per cent to the expenses of the 2010s.

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