The 4.2 percent month: small stones lead the market out of the hole

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. 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.

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.

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 desk's view: 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.