Rapaport Press Release: Historic Uncertainty Impacts Diamond Market
LAS VEGAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Diamond prices rose sharply at the beginning of April in response to announcements of new U.S. import tariffs, and then stabilized later in the month when the U.S. delayed the tariffs by 90 days.
The RapNet Diamond Index (RAPI™) for 1-carat goods edged up 0.7% during the month. The index for 0.30-carat diamonds continued to strengthen, rising 2.8% in April and 13.2% since the beginning of the year. The 0.50-carat RAPI increased 0.6%, while 3-carat stones saw a minor decline of 0.3%. VVS collection goods of 0.30 carats performed well due to increased Indian demand and a slight improvement in China.
The industry operated amid unprecedented uncertainty due to the continuing tariff negotiations between the U.S. and India, respectively the world's largest diamond-consuming and -manufacturing countries. Trading slowed in centers outside the U.S. However, business within the U.S. was steady and prices rose, reflecting part of the expected tariff costs. The market is closely monitoring end-consumer reactions.
U.S. inventories are elevated, as American traders purchased goods before the tariffs' anticipated start date, and global trading centers — especially Indian exporters — shipped popular goods to the U.S. Diamond imports to the U.S. are now slowing down. Elongated fancy shapes saw strong demand during April, both in the U.S. and internationally.
Diamond and jewelry retailers are finishing preparations for Mother's Day on May 11. A survey by the National Retail Federation (NRF) projected that consumer spending on jewelry would be slightly lower than last year.
The rough market was quieter than in March, which was a particularly active period. Anglo American predicts continued caution among rough buyers due to the ongoing macroeconomic uncertainty and the impact of U.S. tariffs. De Beers' sales slid 44% year on year in the first quarter to $520 million as slow demand and a buildup of polished inventory led the midstream to restock more slowly.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
23 minutes ago
- Yahoo
How Robotic Hives and AI Are Lowering the Risk of Bee Colony Collapse
(Bloomberg) — Lifting up the hood of a Beewise hive feels more like you're getting ready to examine the engine of a car than visit with a few thousand pollinators. Security Concerns Hit Some of the World's 'Most Livable Cities' One Architect's Quest to Save Mumbai's Heritage From Disappearing JFK AirTrain Cuts Fares 50% This Summer to Lure Riders Off Roads NYC Congestion Toll Cuts Manhattan Gridlock by 25%, RPA Reports Taser-Maker Axon Triggers a NIMBY Backlash in its Hometown The unit — dubbed a BeeHome — is an industrial upgrade from the standard wooden beehives, all clad in white metal and solar panels. Inside sits a high-tech scanner and robotic arm powered by artificial intelligence. Roughly 300,000 of these units are in use across the US, scattered across fields of almond, canola, pistachios and other crops that require pollination to grow. It's not exactly the romantic vision of a beehive or beekeeper lodged in the cultural consciousness, but then that's not what matters; keeping bees alive does. And Beewise's units do that dramatically better than the standard hive, providing constant insights on colony health and the ability to provide treatment should it start to falter. The US has observed a startling uptick in the number of die-offs since the mid-2000s as beekeepers have struggled to keep pace with the rise of disease-carrying mites, climate extremes and other stressors that can wipe out colonies. That's endangering billions of dollars in crops from almonds to avocados that rely on the pollinators. This past year saw the worst colony losses on record. Beewise has raised nearly $170 million, including a $50 million Series D earlier this month, and it has a plan to change the industry. AI and robotics are able to replace '90% of what a beekeeper would do in the field,' said Beewise Chief Executive Officer and co-founder Saar Safra. The question is whether beekeepers are willing to switch out what's been tried and true equipment. Ultimately, the fate of humans is tied to that of bees. Roughly 75% of crops require pollinators, with nuts and fruits particularly dependent. While other species of bees and insects can play a role, they can't replace honeybees. 'There would essentially be no crop without the bees,' said Zac Ellis, the senior director of agronomy at OFI, a global food and ingredient seller. The beehive hasn't seen much technological innovation in 170 years. The Langstroth hive, named after the American reverend who patented it in 1852, is a simple wooden box with frames that can house the queen and her worker bees, larvae and honey. 'Langstroth hives are easy to work with, break down, build up, manipulate frames, make splits' and move, said Priya Chakrabarti Basu, a Washington State University bee researcher. These boxes are the backbone of the agriculture industry and the high-value crops that are heavily reliant on the 2.5 million commercial hives that crisscross the US on semi-trailers. Beekeepers with thousands of hives will travel from as far away as Florida to provide pollination services for California's $3.9 billion almond crop in spring before moving on to other states and crops. 'Almonds are one of the largest pollination events in the world,' said Ellis, who uses Beewise's hives on 30% of the acres he manages. 'Typically, a grower needs two hives per acre,' each with up to 40,000 bees. Pollinating the 10,000 acres of almonds, walnuts and pistachios he oversees requires millions of bees doing the brunt of the pollination work. The number of hives and demand have created a problem, though: Beekeepers are only able to check on their colonies' health every week or two. But a growing number of threats to bees means entire colonies can be wiped out or weakened past the point of no return in just a few days. Toxic pesticides, a changing climate and a sharp uptick in the invasive, disease-transmitting varroa mite since the 1980s have contributed to the rise of what's known as colony collapse disorder. The exact role each of these issues plays in wiping out colonies is unclear, but they are also likely interacting with each other to take a toll. 'You are rarely going to find a bee who is only, for example, stressed by a mite or a bee who's stressed by a disease only or a bee who's only stressed by poor nutrition,' Chakrabarti Basu said. 'It is always a combination.' The impacts, though, are clear. From the 12-month period starting last April, more than 56% of commercial colonies were wiped out, according to the Apiary Inspectors of America. Beekeepers have taken a major economic hit as a result: Between last June and March, colony losses cost beekeepers an estimated $600 million, according to the Honey Bee Health Coalition. While a new hive design alone isn't enough to save bees, Beewise's robotic hives help cut down on losses by providing a near-constant stream of information on colony health in real time — and give beekeepers the ability to respond to issues. Equipped with a camera and a robotic arm, they're able to regularly snap images of the frames inside the BeeHome, which Safra likened to an MRI. The amount of data they capture is staggering. Each frame contains up to 6,000 cells where bees can, among other things, gestate larvae or store honey and pollen. A hive contains up to 15 frames and a BeeHome can hold up to 10 hives, providing thousands of datapoints for Beewise's AI to analyze. While a trained beekeeper can quickly look at a frame and assess its health, AI can do it even faster, as well as take in information on individual bees in the photos. Should AI spot a warning sign, such as a dearth of new larvae or the presence of mites, beekeepers will get an update on an app that a colony requires attention. The company's technology earned it a BloombergNEF Pioneers award earlier this year. 'There's other technologies that we've tried that can give us some of those metrics as well, but it's really a look in the rearview mirror,' Ellis said. 'What really attracted us to Beewise is their ability to not only understand what's happening in that hive, but to actually act on those different metrics.' That includes administering medicine and food as well as opening and closing vents to regulate temperature or protect against pesticide spraying. Safra noted that after two hurricanes hit Florida last year, BeeHomes in the state were still operational while many wooden hives were destroyed. That durability and responsiveness has Ellis convinced on expanding their use. Today, BeeHomes are on 30% of his acres, but he said within three years, they're aiming for 100% coverage. Whether other growers and beekeepers are as keen to make the switch remains to be seen, though, given nearly two centuries of loyalty to the Langstroth design. The startup wants to more than triple the number of BeeHomes in use, reaching 1 million in three years. 'We're in a race against time,' Safra said. 'We might have the best product on planet earth in 15 years, but it doesn't matter' if there aren't any bees left. Ellis likened the hives to a Ritz-Carlton for pollinators. The five-star stay appears to suit bees well: Beewise says its units — which it leases to provide pollination services at what it says are market rates — have seen colony losses of around 8%. That's a major drop compared to the average annual loss rate of more than 40%, according to Apiary Inspectors of America, a group that tracks colony health. 'The asset is the bees, that's the revenue-generating asset,' said Safra, noting that losing more than 40% of those assets makes it hard for businesses to cover labor to maintain hives, trailers to transport them and other fixed costs. Beewise expects to have $100 million in revenue this year, and Safra said it's a year away from profitability. The company declined to share the valuation for its Series D. It has competition in the bee-saving technology realm. Some companies like Dalan Animal Health are developing vaccines to protect bees against disease. BeeHero and Beeflow (sensing a pattern?) are among those that provide sensors for monitoring health in hives and fields. Both can help improve outcomes at Langstroth hives, but they still require regular beekeeper maintenance. Chakrabarti Basu from Washington State and her colleagues are also working on using AI to detect bees entering hives. 'The more data sets we can give, the better it'll be trained,' she said. 'Pattern recognition — it could be monitoring a brood frame, it could be looking at anything for estimating colony health or any aspect of colony health — I think AI will probably get better at it.' Luxury Counterfeiters Keep Outsmarting the Makers of $10,000 Handbags Ken Griffin on Trump, Harvard and Why Novice Investors Won't Beat the Pros Is Mark Cuban the Loudmouth Billionaire that Democrats Need for 2028? The US Has More Copper Than China But No Way to Refine All of It Can 'MAMUWT' Be to Musk What 'TACO' Is to Trump? ©2025 Bloomberg L.P. Sign in to access your portfolio
Yahoo
36 minutes ago
- Yahoo
This week in Trumponomics: Waiting for the bomb
President Trump has a binary decision to make: Whether to join Israel's attacks on Iran or abstain. But the consequences, either way, will likely be unpredictable, messy, and possibly momentous. Markets have been blasé about the widening Middle East war that erupted on June 13 when Israel attacked Iranian nuclear weapon facilities and other targets. Stocks have barely flinched. Oil prices have drifted up, but at $75 per barrel, they're nowhere near crisis levels. The calm may be deceptive. 'The potential for major downside market surprise is more elevated than many would have it,' Terry Haines, founder of Pangaea Policy, wrote in a June 19 analysis. "Market volatility almost certainly will be larger and longer in duration than the usual geopolitical event that is contained quickly.' Trump started out talking tough about Iran's predicament, posting on social media on June 17 that he expected 'unconditional surrender' from the ruling mullahs. But Trump is clearly riven. His whole 'America first' governing theme is based on avoiding foreign entanglements, not embracing them. He calls himself a 'man of peace' and prides himself on negotiating savvy, not swordsmanship. The standoff has led to an increasingly familiar Trump tactic: delay. Trump now says he'll decide by July 4 or so whether to aid Israel in its quest to destroy Iran's nuclear program and prevent it from getting atomic weapons. During its first week of bombing, Israel was able to knock out much of Iran's air defense network, destroy many missile launchers, damage some nuclear facilities, and assassinate a number of Iranian military leaders. It's a humiliation for a nation with nine times the population of Israel and a fanatical regime that says the destruction of Israel is a foundational Israel apparently can't do, however, is destroy the Fordow nuclear complex, which is buried at least 250 feet beneath a mountain 60 miles south of Tehran. The only conventional weapon with a good shot of reaching that deep is the US GBU-57 'massive ordnance penetrator' bomb, which is so big that only American bomber jets can carry it. So Trump has to decide whether to unleash a wave of B-2 bombers over Iran with the mission to demolish the Fordow complex. Armchair generals might see this as a simple one-and-done job. It's anything but. Iran would likely retaliate, threatening some 40,000 American service members stationed in the Middle East and possibly seeking to close the Hormuz Strait, a way station for 20% of the world's petroleum. Trump needs a couple of weeks to think it over. But he's also seeking a way to get Iran to agree to limit its nuclear program through negotiations, which would fulfill his 'man of peace' declaration and avert a US war with Iran that could leave Americans dead and badly mar Trump's presidency. This explains some of Trump's manic-sounding social media posts regarding Iran. Bellicose Trump threatened to assassinate Iranian leader Ali Khameini, saying, 'We know exactly where the so-called 'supreme leader' is hiding. He is an easy target.' He also said 'everyone should immediately evacuate Tehran,' as if American weapons were about to obliterate a megacity as densely populated as New York. Yet, Reasonable Trump has been urging Iran to accept a deal he's been working on since he took office in January. A Trump deal is only necessary because Trump scuttled the last deal with Iran, which former President Barack Obama finalized in 2015. Under that deal, Iran agreed to limit its nuclear weapons development in exchange for relief from punishing economic sanctions. Trump withdrew the United States from that deal, saying it was too soft on Iran. But he never got a better deal. The Obama deal was imperfect, to be sure. But all of Iran's recent progress on nuclear weapons came after Trump pulled out in 2018, and Iran may now be within weeks or months of building a nuke it could launch at Israel. Trump may now think Iran is in a can't-win position. Israel represents not just the threat of force, but actual force that degrades Iranian capabilities each day. That lets Trump play the good cop, whose supposed nuclear deal offers a way for Iran to escape Israeli pummeling. And with the massive ordnance penetrator in his back pocket, Trump can threaten even worse punishment than Israel is delivering. But Iran still might not cave. It could relocate much of its nuclear material and gird for the destruction of Fordow. Some analysts estimate Iran could reconstitute its nuclear program within a year or two, especially if it forswears any cooperation with weapons monitors or nonproliferation regimes. Iran could also try to snooker Trump into a sweetheart deal, hoping he'll grasp at anything he can claim as a victory. If nothing much changes by the end of Trump's two-week decision window, will dropping the big bomb be Trump's default position? Not necessarily. Trump could simply delay a decision by another two weeks or find some other formulation for basically doing nothing. Delay, in fact, is becoming Trump's go-to tactic. Trump has thrice delayed the date by which social media platform TikTok must sell itself to a non-Chinese buyer or go dark in the United States. Congress passed a law requiring that last year, but it did give the president the leeway of postponing enforcement, and Trump has taken advantage of it. The new deadline is Sept. 17. Trump also delayed the 'reciprocal' tariffs on dozens of nations reaching, in some cases, into the high double digits. Trump postponed those until July 9, saying that he expected to negotiate dozens of trade deals by then that would obviate the need for tariffs. As the deadline draws near, however, there have been hardly any announced deals. A buoyant stock markets suggest that investors think Trump will delay those tariffs yet again. But Trump also risks losing credibility with his counterparts if he always delays and never makes good on his threats. If Trump doesn't get the job done with Iran, the Islamic theocracy could hobble along as a wounded but dangerous combatant willing to take bigger risks. Trump will look like a bluffer who brags about a giant bomb he's afraid to use. He might discover that keeping America out of foreign wars doesn't make the nation better off, after all. Rick Newman is a senior columnist for Yahoo Finance. Follow him on Bluesky and X: @rickjnewman. Click here for political news related to business and money policies that will shape tomorrow's stock prices.
Yahoo
42 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Greene County homes for sale were listed at higher prices in May. Here's a look
The median home in Greene County listed for $339,500 in May, up 4.8% from the previous month's $323,825, an analysis of data from shows. Compared to May 2024, the median home list price increased 3.9% from $326,625. The statistics in this article only pertain to houses listed for sale in Greene County, not houses that were sold. Information on your local housing market, along with other useful community data, is available at Greene County's median home was 1,884 square feet, listed at $172 per square foot. The price per square foot of homes for sale is up 1% from May 2024. Listings in Greene County moved steadily, at a median 42 days listed compared to the May national median of 51 days on the market. In the previous month, homes had a median of 43 days on the market. Around 504 homes were newly listed on the market in May, a 9.1% increase from 462 new listings in May 2024. The median home prices issued by may exclude many, or even most, of a market's homes. The price and volume represent only single-family homes, condominiums or townhomes. They include existing homes, but exclude most new construction as well as pending and contingent sales. Across the Springfield metro area, median home prices rose to $349,900, slightly higher than a month earlier. The median home had 1,885 square feet, at a list price of $173 per square foot. In Missouri, median home prices were $309,999, a slight increase from April. The median Missouri home listed for sale had 1,760 square feet, with a price of $173 per square foot. Throughout the United States, the median home price was $440,000, a slight increase from the month prior. The median American home for sale was listed at 1,840 square feet, with a price of $234 per square foot. The median home list price used in this report represents the midway point of all the houses or units listed over the given period of time. Experts say the median offers a more accurate view of what's happening in a market than the average list price, which would mean taking the sum of all listing prices then dividing by the number of homes sold. The average can be skewed by one particularly low or high price. The USA TODAY Network is publishing localized versions of this story on its news sites across the country, generated with data from Please leave any feedback or corrections for this story here. This story was written by Ozge Terzioglu. Our News Automation and AI team would like to hear from you. Take this survey and share your thoughts with us. This article originally appeared on Springfield News-Leader: Greene County homes for sale were listed at higher prices in May
