GIA Senior analyst described the diamond market in May

Markets remain cautious over the world economy and while the U.S. performance continues to improve slowly, worries about the two biggest growth markets -India and China - have injected an air of caution into the diamond market, concluded Russell Shor, Senior Analyst of GIA, in his last industry analysis.
Preliminary reports released on May 1-5 from the Diamond Trading Company sight indicate that it is quite small, $535 million, with few additional allocations offered. Also, DTC apparently was unable to supply full allocations of some requested goods. DTC raised prices slightly on lower clarity goods and lowered them on some top qualities, reflecting the demand for “downtrading” among retailers in the U.S. and China.
The reason for DTC’s caution is that polished prices, especially for higher quality goods, remain soft as diamond manufacturers continue to struggle with rough prices that reached record highs last year and banks tightened credit.
Rough markets began to improve earlier this year to the point where premiums on De Beers DTC goods reached 8% in February and March and ventured a small price increase of 2% to 3%.  But rough prices stalled in the past month as polished prices failed to follow suit.
Indeed, De Beers renounced the role of “industry custodian” years ago, but is now taking a different approach to “stockpiling.” The company announced that its first quarter production was down 16%, to 6.2 million carats, after watching rough and polished prices tumble in the previous quarter.
At the beginning of last year, De Beers estimated it would mine 38 million carats, but recovered only 33 million, less than Russia’s Alrosa. The biggest slowdown came after the market began to slide in summer. This year, the company made no prediction, but if it keeps at the same pace, it will produce just under 25 million carats.
Spring-time auctions broke price records for diamonds and jewelry sales accross the board. At Christie’s April 17 sale in New York, the GIA-graded 9 carat Fancy Vivid purplish pink Huguette Clark diamond fetched $15.76 million, making it the most valuable pink diamond ever sold at auction in the U.S. The entire auction sold 97% by value and brought in $70.7 million, one of the highest amounts ever achieved in a single jewelry sale. The very next day, Sotheby’s New York jewelry auction rang up $43.2 million, its highest total for a spring sale.
The interesting aspect of these sales is that the buyers of all the top lots were from the jewelry trade, not the private collectors who had been taking an ever-growing share of lots.
Most of the investment demand comes from Asia and the Middle East, which is why a major Hong Kong auction on May 29 will attract worldwide attention. Christie’s is offering the GIA-graded 12.04 carat Martian Pink, a Fancy Intense pink diamond with a presale estimate of $8-10 million.

Veronica Novoselova, Rough&Polished correspondent in Italy