Diamond News Archives

The Diamond Club West Coast, one of the three diamond bourses affiliated to the World Federation of Diamond Bourses (WFDB) in the USA, hosted a delegation from the GIA at its monthly luncheon meeting.

An impressive number of the DCWC membership came to the bourse on South Hill Street in Los Angeles to meet and listen to Phillip Yantzer, Vice President of Laboratory Operations at GIA.

Yantzer explained the changes experienced at GIA's laboratories across the world in 2019, and offered give a comprehensive update on GIA's laboratory activities. Among others, he discussed the changes in stone sizes taken in by the leading lab and the qualitative measures taken by GIA to maintain the high standard of grading set by the lab.

On their part, members didn't hesitate to ask pointed questions that included references to inconsistencies in GIA diamond grading  reports; perceived inconsistencies between stones emerging from GIA labs in different geographical locations; the results produced by automated grading technology opposite GIA's human graders; and the need to create more distinction between natural and lab grown diamonds.

Addressing the matter of GIA issuing  grading reports for lab grown diamonds, DCWC President Moshe Salem echoed the trade's sentiment that "GIA reports must go further to distinguish between natural and lab-grown diamonds, to allow the consumer to make the best decision that is aligned with their interest."

The attending audience, called a large crowd by the DCWC, seemed quite happy with the transparent and forthcoming nature of Yantzer's presentation and his responses to their many questions.

Another topic discussed was GIA's recent advancement of its Know Your Customer (KYC) initiative, as GIA is proactively pressuring all...

While the surging gold price has received most of the spotlight in the market, silver will outperform the king monetary metal over the longer term.  Key fundamental factors make silver the more attractive asset and investment to own versus gold when we look closely at the data.  However, that doesn’t mean precious metals investors shouldn’t own gold.  Investors need to own both precious metals, but I believe silver will provide better returns than gold in the future.

Now, there is this notion put forth by many precious metals analysts that central banks will be forced, at some point, to back their currencies by gold.  Thus, the idea is that gold will reset at a much higher price.  While that is a possibility, backing debt-based currencies with gold will not solve our coming energy crisis.  And, let me tell you, it’s an energy predicament that we have no real solution.

You see, it doesn’t really matter if we back fiat money with gold.  The REAL ISSUE has always been ENERGY. The massive increase in debt and derivatives are a symptom of the Falling EROI (Energy Returned On Investment) of oil.  Basically, while gold may solve certain issues in regards to “Confidence” in money, it doesn’t fix our energy problems.

I touched on this briefly in my newest video, Why Silver Is Better Than Gold^[1].  However, most of the video explains new charts that show fundamental factors on why silver is a better investment than gold as well as some key price levels for the short term.

One of the more important charts in the video shows the amount of “Identifiable” physical gold and silver investment stocks.  Interestingly, according to the data from the World Gold Council and the World Silver Surveys,...

Illustration: Xia Qing/GT

The safe-haven property of gold has fully manifested in recent weeks. Spot gold hit $1,535.11 an ounce on August 13, the highest level since 2013.

I believe the gold price could reach as high as $1,800 an ounce in the future, and in the meantime, there will be increasing discussions about the world's return to the gold standard. The global market structure has been undergoing tremendous changes these days. The US has been pulling itself out of the multilateral arena for the purposes of protecting and enhancing the value of its own market space. As a result, signs of structural adjustments in the world market have become increasingly evident, but are still far from raising the general attention of the global financial community. In fact, many people still hope that such structural adjustments won't happen, so the market can go back to the old days.

Yet, it's impossible to go back to the past because the structural adjustments are based on global capital surplus and severe overcapacity, which could cause serious world economic and financial crises.

So what would be the outcome?

The most significant change is a return to the gold standard. As capital surplus and overcapacity have exerted great pressure on the world market space, the world financial system is also trying to adapt to the huge change which is centered on the status of the dollar. From the perspective of the global financial system, the dollar is a super currency that has a strong backing of global geopolitics. 

The status of the super currency is supposed to be unshakable, but the problem is that the US itself wants to give up this status and pursue a future characterized by US President Donald Trump's freestyle, thereby...

The Times of India (ToI) reported that India's diamond cutting and polishing industry will be deferring purchases of about $2 billion as it is currently sitting on roughly $10 billion worth of rough stocks. ToI said that the purchase of rough stones by diamantaires of Surat and Mumbai between January and July this year has fallen to the lowest in the past ten years.

The world's two largest miners and distributors of rough diamonds, Russian's Alrosa and De Beers, saw sales drop about $2.5 billion in the first half of 2019. De Beers already announced it will allow its sight holders additional flexibility in deferring rough purchases - or the deferral of at least part of the parcels offered for sale.

Toi noted that the $10 billion rough inventory in India was the highest since the economic crisis of a decade ago. It quoted Immediate president of Surat Diamond Association (SDA), Babu Gujarati as saying that Many diamond manufacturers in Surat are sitting on their stocks for the last five months. They are certainly not going to procure new stocks of rough."

In the April to July period, Indian rough diamonds imports fell to $4.,5 billion compared to $6.5 billion in the same period of 2018. Exports of polished goods fell 18 percent to $6.7 billion compared to $8 billion in April-July 2018, as per data of the Gems & Jewellery Export Promotion Council (GJEPC). ...