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by Will Purcell

The diamond and specialty minerals stocks box score on Friday was a mediocre 69-80-161 as the TSX Venture Exchange lost four points to 609. Well, that is a nice bounce! Paul Zimnisky's global rough diamond price index spurted northward this week, adding 1.2 points to reach 137.6 points. With the 0.1 point that Mr. Zimnisky tacked onto last week's setting, correcting for tardy data, the index is up 1.3 points from where we thought it was a week ago -- a gain of nearly a full percentage point.

Yes, a one-week rise is usually an aberration. There have been a few similarly noteworthy jogs over the past year, but all were followed in quick succession by a slow-but-steady decline. Indeed, the last multiweek rise occurred nearly a year ago, as rough prices rose about 2.5 points over a two-week stretch in mid-December. Unfortunately, that gain ended when the voluntary moratorium on rough diamond purchases in the Indian sector was lifted, prompting miners to boost their sales. A seven-point slide in the index over the following six weeks was the result.

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