- Joined
- Sep 2, 2002
- Messages
- 2,859
Dear Pricescopers,
Since we have a history of regularly bringing you information about the general diamond-market, here is what I consider very important information. Let me first give a short post with our experience, and then speak about the general worldwide diamond-market in a more extensive second post.
Last week we were participating in an important tender of rough diamonds. Since some of the parcels were composed very much to our liking, we bid very seriously to have the highest bid and thus purchase these parcels. In fact, we bid about 12% above our calculated base-value. Our disappointment was huge when the results of the tender revealed that we were not even within 20% of the highest bid.
Other Antwerp trading houses have now raised prices on their polished goods to improve their ability to purchase rough. The end-result is that we had no choice but to increase our own price-level today, by an average of about 5%. All of our dealers in the US and Europe have been informed, and they will probably adjust their pricing to the public too.
The current price-increase is limited and we will be monitoring both the markets of rough and polished diamonds closely in the next weeks and months to see if this is sufficient. If prices of rough remain at the level reflected by this last tender there will most probably be further increases. If the market cools down however, this small adaptation might be sufficient.
The underlying causes of current price-developments will be covered in the next post.