IDEX Polished Price Index Continues Its Year-Long Decline

(IDEX Online) - Polished diamond prices tumbled 17.3 per cent year-on-year in March. Such a dramatic fall shows how dependent the market has become on world events. This kind of volatility was unknown in the days when De Beers cornered the market and insulated prices.

It controlled 90 per cent of the diamond market in the late 1980s and fluctuations were mostly limited to single digits. Then Russia, Canada and Australia discovered their own diamonds, De Beers' grip weakened, and in 2011 the Oppenheimer family relinquished its long-held stake to Anglo American.

March 2022 was the first full month after Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The previous March saw prices rise by a hefty 24.2 per cent.  The markets were close to the peak of a post-Covid spending frenzy, buoyed by low interest rates and the US government pouring trillions of recovery dollars into the economy.

Year-on-year prices have been falling since December, but the March drop of over 17 per cent was the worst in at least the last four years, and certainly worse than anything during the Covid pandemic.

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