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by Will Purcell

The diamond and specialty minerals stocks box score on Friday was an anemic 75-93-142 as the TSX Venture Exchange rose fractionally to 520. There was a faint hint of sparkle when New York-based diamond analyst, Paul Zimnisky, updated his weekly global rough diamond price index this week. No, there was not a huge upward surge in prices -- not even a modest gain -- but for the first time in several months there was no decline in prices. Oh, Mr. Zimnisky did peg his index at 152.8 and investors may recall that last week it was at 152.9, but that was a readjustment based on late-to-arrive data.

Mr. Zimnisky's gloomy chart has rough diamond prices down on average about 26.3 per cent from the all-time high reached in early 2022, when the index stood at 207.2, a high that marginally eclipsed a high of 200 points reached in the spring of 2011. Both highs were bubbly affairs that capped two-year rallies following diamond sector collapses -- the first one in 2009 in the depths of the Great Recession, and the other in the spring of 2000, when COVID-19 shuttered all the venues for selling diamond production.

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