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by Will Purcell

The diamond and specialty minerals stocks box score on Friday was a mediocre 75-89-146 as the TSX Venture Exchange fell six points to 608. Rough diamond prices remained flattish again this week, the fourth week after a major downward slump noted by Paul Zimnisky and his global rough diamond price index had ended. Mr. Zimnisky nudged last week's setting index slightly higher to account for late-to-arrive data, but current data then triggered a 0.3-point decline, putting the current setting at 128.0 points.

The recent trend may be flattish, but it is not flat -- not unlike the Canadian prairies, which roll on endlessly without so much as a hillock in sight, yet they drop several hundred metres from west to east. And so, Mr. Zimnisky has rough diamond prices down 0.7 per cent over the past month, but down a hefty 7 per cent over the past two months, when the most recent slide began.

Mr. Zimnisky has not yet scratched a new horizontal dashed line across a portion of his chart, depicting what promoters and investors hope might be a sign that rough prices are about to turn northward. The chart shows two previous flat stretches over the past year -- timed with earlier hopes for a rebound. The most recent one ran from midsummer to early October, when the index sat near the 136-point mark, while the first flat stretch of 2024 ran from mid-January to late March, when Mr. Zimnisky's index hugged the 149-point line.

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