The 4.2 percent month: small stones lead the market out of the hole
Rapaport's 0.30-carat index rose 4.2 percent in June — double May's pace — while Antwerp's half-year trade climbed 9 percent to $10.6 billion on 14 percent more carats. The recovery is real, narrow, and starts at the bottom of the size chart.
By The Data Desk
What changed
Diamond recoveries do not announce themselves at the top of the market; they start in melee and work up. June's index data makes the pattern explicit: the RapNet index for 0.30-carat polished rose 4.2 percent in the month, accelerating from May's 2.1, while the 0.50-carat index added 1.3 percent.
What it means
- A recovery led by 0.30-carat goods is a trade recovery, not yet a consumer one — the 1-carat index is still the number the shopper meets, and it is still soft. But markets heal from the bottom of the size chart up, and the sequence is running in the right order: inventory cleared, small stones repriced, rough discipline enforced, and now the official price list cut to meet reality.
- Watch the 1-carat line through the autumn.
Key figures
| 0.30ct polished, June | +4.2% |
|---|---|
| 1ct index, still soft | −0.7% |
| Antwerp H1 trade | $10.6B |
| carats through Antwerp | 38.9M |
Source: June indexes & Antwerp H1
Recoveries start in melee and work up
The 1-carat index — the engagement-ring benchmark — slipped 0.7 percent, and 3-carat goods turned a modest 0.4 percent positive. Small stones are not merely participating in the recovery; for now, they are the recovery.
June's polished indexes, by size · % change
Source: June indexes & Antwerp H1
Inventory, not euphoria, is doing the lifting
The mechanics are inventory, not euphoria. Two years of reduced polishing output ran down midstream stocks of small goods, and when US retail demand held firmer than the mood suggested, the shortage did what shortages do.
Rapaport's analysts note the strongest performance in 2-carat-plus G-I, VS-SI rounds and long fancies as well — value-conscious quality, the goods a cautious retailer actually reorders.
Antwerp's half-year ledger tells the same story from the trading floor. Combined imports and exports rose 9 percent year on year to $10.6 billion on 38.9 million carats, up 14 percent.
The mix underneath is the tell: rough volumes surged — imports from Botswana up 162 percent, Angola 56, the UAE 53 — while rough values fell 15 percent, and polished import values jumped 26 percent on prices up 14 percent per carat.
More stones moving at lower rough prices, with polished repricing upward: that is what a pipeline refilling into a firming market looks like. The AWDC is careful to add that activity remains roughly a quarter below the first half of 2024.
| Figure | |
|---|---|
| 0.30 Ct | +4.2% |
| 0.50 Ct | +1.3% |
| 3 Ct | +0.4% |
The 1-carat benchmark slipped 0.7% — the recovery starts at the bottom The recovery, sized: small goods reprice first while the engagement benchmark waits. Carat Capital graphics desk.
The supply side is cooperating by subtraction
The supply side is cooperating by subtraction, a theme this page has tracked for weeks. Global rough production fell 8 percent to 98.8 million carats in 2025, worth $9.23 billion, down 3 percent; this summer has added Severalmaz's three-month suspension, Kao's care-and-maintenance, Finsch's business rescue and now Venetia's two-year pause.
Less rough into firmer small-stone demand is the simplest bullish argument the natural pipeline has had in years.
The story so far
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Method
The 1-carat benchmark slipped 0.7% — the recovery starts at the bottom