| The diamond and specialty minerals stocks box score on Friday was a positive 95-71-144as the TSX Venture Exchange rose five points to 525. Lithium Ionic Corp. (LTH) had a good day, adding nine cents to $1.80 on 1.65 million shares. Glory be! Although New York-based diamond analyst Paul Zimnisky set his global rough diamond price index unchanged this week, he did so at 152.6 points, a 0.2-per-cent increase over last week's 152.2 points. Mr. Zimnisky adjusts his index when information trickles in late remember, and last week the tardy data came bearing good news. Nevertheless, the chart is full of gloom, if not doom, as the index is off a full 17 per cent from the 183.9 points where it sat a year ago. Worse, it is 26.4 per cent lower than its all-time high of 207.3 points reached in early 2022. No matter: Mr. Zimnisky appears hopeful the slide is over. The left half of his chart sports a faint dashed line indicating that rough prices were flattish from late October of 2022 to late April of 2023. Now, his chart also sports a tentative new set of flattish dashes covering the past three weeks. Meanwhile, the five-month gap between the two sets of dashes, which slumps earthward like the main descent of the Mighty Canadian Minebuster roller coaster in Toronto, must do so without any guiding dashes. And so, the 18-month slide in rough prices threatens to become a diamond mine buster in Canada. Osisko Gold Royalties Ltd. (OR) up 21 cents to $17.52 on 1.74 million shares today, recently decided to put its 35-per-cent-owned Renard mine in north-central Quebec on care and maintenance -- and into bankruptcy protection. This is the second time Renard hit bankruptcy protection. The first time, four years ago, shareholders of Stornoway Diamond Corp. lost everything, while Osisko and three other secured creditors ended up reluctant diamond miners. As well, the shares of Mountain Province Diamonds Inc.(MPVD), which rose one cent to 23.5 cents on 200,000 shares today, dipped to an all-time low of 19.5 cents last week as the company cuts costs and looks to direct what it can to paying down its debt. In fact, Mountain Province has been in a nearly steady state of debt reorganization since the COVID crisis hit in 2020, if not before. Debt rating agency Moody's Investors Service had rated Mountain Province at B3 in its initial rating in 2017, not long after the mine hit commercial production. It twice downgraded the company in 2020, a period during which the company was unable to sell its rough through its usual tenders, leaving it with a junky Caa-3 rating. And there it stayed, until Moody's withdrew its rating last year after Mr. Desmond helped Mountain Province rejig its debt. Worse, FitchRatings, which also withdrew its rating late last year, delivered a kick before it did, downgrading Mountain Province to "restricted default" -- a hair above its bottom "D" rating. As for what lies ahead, one might ask an analyst -- although consulting a crystal ball has offered comparable success rates of late. A year ago, the common refrain had rough prices on the rise as little new production was coming to market, while demand was sure to grow. Unfortunately, the analysts were talking about mining production. Meanwhile, production of synthetic diamonds has continued to grow exponentially. While the last quarter of one year and the first few months of the next are typically the best of times for diamond prices, thanks to this being the prime holiday season around the world, buyers and sellers are having to resort to draconian measures to prevent a free fall in prices. India's diamond sector recently imposed a two-month pause on imports, and now, Botswana's state-owned diamond trader, Okavango Diamond Co. (ODC), has cancelled its November sale, citing weak demand. "For the first time, we have had to build up inventory as we do not want to just irresponsibly release goods into a market which is already oversupplied," sighed ODC managing director, Mmetla Masire, adding that for now, they have stopped the auctions and "will decide on the December auction later this year." Alrosa, Russia's state-owned diamond company, recently said it was pausing sales, while De Beers has lately been allowing its customers to refuse offered good until the end of the year. And so, rough prices will surely flatten or begin to rebound -- so long as most miners decline to sell their production. Dev Randhawa's F3 Uranium Corp. (FUU) fell one-half cent to 36.5 cents on 670,000 shares. The company is waiting for more of the exceptionally rich uranium oxide hits from Patterson Lake North on the southwestern edge of the Athabasca basin in Northern Saskatchewan -- hits like the 59.2-per-cent grade that sent the company's scintillometers into a frenzy over the past year. This is a recent find, so more drilling appears likely before the company delineates a resource. |