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by Will Purcell

The diamond and specialty minerals stocks box score on Friday was a positive 103-66-141 as the TSX Venture Exchange rose three points to 612. Rough diamond prices had a tough stretch according to New York-based diamond analyst Paul Zimnisky. His global rough diamond price index shed 0.3 per cent this week, but that is just the opening salvo of bad news.

Mr. Zimnisky also adjusts recent weeks for late-to-arrive data, and the tardy information spread more gloom across the chart, leaving rough prices 12.2 per cent lower than the all-time high set in early 2022, a drop of 0.8 per cent from last week. Mr. Zimnisky still has his helpful dashed lines to entice investors toward accepting a view that the steady decline following the 2022 peak ended late last year, with prices having been flat since then.

Perhaps, but even so, that is unfortunately what happened when the nearly-two-year-long rally that followed the Great Recession finally bubbled out in the spring of 2011. For the next several years, rough diamond prices rose, then fell, but never by much and did more falling than rising to the point that prices were lower in 2018 than in 2012. The following year saw a bit of an upswing and 2020 started well -- just as COVID-19 was wending its way out of Wuhan.

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