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by Will Purcell

The diamond and specialty minerals stocks box score on Friday was a ho-hum 76-80-154 as the TSX Venture Exchange fell fractionally to 552. Last week's glimmer of optimism about rough diamond prices was more mirage than mirror, according to Paul Zimnisky's global rough diamond price index. A week ago, Mr. Zimnisky ended a five-week stretch with flattish prices by boosting the index to 149.7 points, a 0.75-per-cent gain over his earlier fix.

Thanks to late-to-arrive data, last week's setting now appears overly enthusiastic. Mr. Zimnisky peeled back his previous setting to 149.3 points, and from there he scraped off another 0.1 point this week, setting his index at 149.2 points, a drop of 0.3 per cent. The current fix is now 28.1 per cent below the 207.3 points at which Mr. Zimnisky had put his index in mid-February of 2022, when it set an all-time high.

The good news is that the several price plunges that have dominated his chart since prices hit that record high have given way to a flat bottom. Better yet -- if one cocks their eyebrows and holds their tongue just so -- one can perhaps glean a modest rise across that bottom: Mr. Zimnisky says the low came late in January at 148.4 points, so over the past seven weeks, prices have gained 0.8 point -- about 0.5 per cent.

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