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by Will Purcell

The diamond and specialty minerals stocks box score on Friday was an upbeat 84-61-155 as the TSX Venture Exchange rose fractionally to 550. Word came late last week that De Beers had significantly cut its rough diamond prices at its first tender of the year, word that spread despair if not doom among diamond investors. Now, Paul Zimnisky's global rough diamond price index has more than confirmed the pessimism.

Not only were prices down sharply this week, but Mr. Zimnisky rejigged the last several weeks of data to add to the disappointment. He always nudges his chart to and fro to account for tardy information, and for the past month those usually modest nudges have arrived as a white knight to rescue weary diamantaires. Unfortunately, this latest batch of late-to-arrive data rode into town like an outrider -- Gloom perhaps -- galloping abreast the four horsemen of the apocalypse.

Mr. Zimnisky's index was not at 156.4 last week as we thought just seven days past, no, it was in fact at 150.3. Not only had a full six points suddenly gone poof, the five previous weeks were jarred downward as well -- an earthquake with proportions that would knock Charles Richter fall off his scale. Worse, this week the index shed another 1.5 points from the readjusted perch, and so it now sits at 148.8 points -- a 1.0 per cent drop this week and a 3.1-per-cent decline over the past month.

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