IDEX Polished Price Index Hits Record High

(IDEX Online) - The IDEX Polished Price Index rose by 4.14 per cent during February and is now higher than it has been for over a decade. The monthly increase was significant, but less than January's 5.67 per cent. The February increase was close to a straight line with daily rises, unlike January, which saw virtually no movement for three weeks followed by a steep hike.  The value of the Index averaged across the whole of February was up 24.2 per cent on the same month in 2021.

A longer-term graph below shows the Index maintaining the steep climb that began last November. The average Index value throughour February was 151.77 -  that's higher than July 2011, when it peaked at 146.69. The average of daily Index readings for the first two months of 2022 is 147.08, well above 127.88 for the whole of 2021 and 119.22 for 2020. The Index had been gradually declining since mid-2018 to a low point in April 2020, when the first lockdowns hit. The overall trend since then has been upwards.

Polished diamond prices shot up by 6.2 per cent in February, the highest monthly increase for at least four years. Last December they rose 4.4 per cent, and in January they increased by 3.8 per cent. For context, the biggest monthly increase in the last four years was 2.2 per cent in June 2021.

Year-on-year prices for February were up almost a quarter, at 24.2 per cent, indicating genuine growth over and above recovery from Covid. The overall trend has been upwards since the depths of the pandemic in April 2020, albeit with a dip last September and October.

Polished month-on-month prices were up by more than 5.0 per cent for all sizes shown below during February. The steepest rise was for 1.50-cts, at 7.7 per cent. Increases for all sizes were greater than in January.

Year-on-year diamond prices for February show increases of almost a third among 1.50-cts and 2.0-cts goods. Price rises for stones of all sizes shown below are significant - and well in excess of January's figures.

Prices for all sizes shown below are rising, and more steeply than we have seen in recent years.

Assessment: Prices are still rising, and the rate of increase is accelerating. But the big new unknown for the industry is the impact sanctions and banking restrictions will have on Alrosa, which supplies almost a third of the world's rough diamonds. That is, of course, on top of the big old unknown, the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.