Dear Friends,
The summer season is coming to a close, and the long vacations are behind us. Hopefully, we all took advantage of the fresh air and the slower pace to recharge our batteries and are returning to work with renewed energies.
While we were out, the diamond industry took a bit of a break as well. Diamond trading was seasonally quiet in most bourses, both polished and rough. However, as we see in the article we’ve included below, US retail sales remained strong, showing that consumers continued to shop throughout the summer, despite fears of inflation.
The US market remains the major focus for the industry, especially since the Chinese market was severely hit by Covid lockdowns. However, as we can see from the item below from the Shanghai Diamond Exchange, since June the Chinese market is showing signs of recovery, and our friend SDE President and WFDB Vice-President Lin Qiang predicts that the Chinese consumer market will be back on a growth track in the second half of the year.
With this good news, and with Covid seemingly behind us, I am optimistic that the 2022 holiday season will be a positive one for the world diamond industry.
And some additional good news. As we report below, the WFDB diamond trading platform, Get-Diamonds, reported a major increase in the number of registered and active users since the beginning of the year.
Best regards,
Yoram Dvash
