Diamond News Archives

(IDEX Online) – Gemfields has announced auction revenues of $28.4 million from a November 14-17 sale of higher quality rough emeralds held in Singapore. <?xml:namespace prefix = "o" ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /?>

The company recorded an average price of $68.03 per carat, with 40 companies placing bids and 74% of the goods offered being sold, a significant improvement on the results of the last such auction held last May.

The 30 auctions of goods from Kagem held since July 2009 have generated $556 million in total revenues.

The emeralds were extracted by Kagem Mining Ltd in Zambia which is 75% owned by Gemfields and 25% by the Industrial Development Corporation of Zambia.

The proceeds of this auction will be fully repatriated to Kagem in Zambia, with all royalties due to the government of Zambia being paid on the full sales prices achieved at the auction.

“Kagem and Gemfields believe colored gemstones should be mined and marketed by championing three key values - legitimacy, transparency and integrity," commented Gemfields CEO Sean Gilbertson. "We also believe that Zambia should benefit equitably from its natural resources through the taxes we contribute to the government, the foreign exchange earnings we generate, increased local employment, and the social impact of our community projects.” ...

(IDEX Online) – De Beers sold rough diamonds with a provisional value of $440 million in the ninth sales cycle (Global Sightholder Sales and Auction Sales) of 2018.<?xml:namespace prefix = "o" ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /?>

The sales figure is the lowest sales figure reported by the miner so far this year and the second consecutive sale below the $500 million mark.

The miner reported confirmed sales of $482 million in the eighth cycle, compared with an initial provisional figure of $475 million.

Bruce Cleaver, CEO, De Beers Group, said: “As the industry’s focus turns towards the key end of year retail selling season, rough diamond sales continued to be in line with expectation during the ninth cycle of the year. While demand for smaller, lower quality rough diamonds continues to see some challenges, the latest cycle saw some signs of improvement in this area as factories in India begin to reopen after Diwali.”

De Beers' sales in the eighth sight of 2017 were $466 million....

The inflection point was July. Conditions have deteriorated since.

Active listings of houses and condos for sale in October in King County – which includes Seattle and Bellevue but does not include Tacoma – nearly doubled compared to October last year, jumping 91% to 5,749 listings, according to data by the National Association of Realtors. This was the largest inventory for sale since the end of Housing Bust 1 going back to 2012.

Inventory for sale started surging off low levels in the spring. In July, it reached the highest level since October 2014; and it continued to soar from then on. By this measure, July marked the inflection point of the housing market in King County. An inflection point is the beginning of the downturn in a market. It’s when the rising line representing the market bends (inflects) and starts going downward. The red bars in the chart mark the months following the inflection point (all data below via realtor.com^[1]):

And cuts in asking prices explode. When inventory piles up and sales cannot keep up because potential buyers aren’t buying, motivated sellers roll up their sleeves and see what it takes to move the house or condo, and what moves it are price reductions that are deep enough to meet the market. The market is where buyers are, but they have retreated and sellers are now having to find them. Gone are the price wars when buyers jostled for position for their chance to drive the price even higher.

The chart below shows the number of price cuts per month in King County. By this measure too, the inflection point occurred in July, when price cuts reached the highest point since October 2014. And over the following...

The numbers: The National Association of Home Builders’ monthly confidence index^[1] plunged eight points to 60 in November.

What happened: The many headwinds that have been dogging the industry finally showed up in this report. Labor is still expensive, lots are still scarce, lumber is at the mercy of tariff politics, and now, mortgage rates are rising and customers are holding back.

NAHB, the building industry’s Washington lobby, noted in a press release that the reading of 60 is still “positive,” but that “customers are taking a pause.” The eight-point plunge is only reminiscent of the nine-point drop just after the 9/11 attacks and one other instance, a 10-point drop, in early 2014. The overall reading is the lowest since mid-2016. November’s results badly missed the Econoday consensus of a flat reading.

In November, the sub-gauge of current conditions fell seven points to 67, the tracker of expected future conditions plunged 10 points to 65, and the gauge of buyer traffic was down eight points, to 45.

Any reading over 50 signals improvement.

Also read: Housing starts lurch lower in another weak month for residential construction^[2]

Big picture: The gauge of builder sentiment has long been considered an early read on the pace of construction, an important economic indicator considering how desperately more new homes have been needed.

But such a sharp drop may presage something more sinister than a slower pace of building. Home builders were one of the first groups...