De Beers moves to full control of Gahcho Kué on an otherwise flat board, with the September RAPI now about two days out as the figure that still settles the open one-carat call

De Beers is moving to full control of the Gahcho Kué mine in Canada, with Rapaport reporting on October 4 that its joint-venture partner Mountain Province Diamonds will hand over its stake. No new sight or tender cleared this week, so this is the producer item of note: a single owner can now decide on its own whether to run the mine at volume or hold output back to protect price, which in a soft market points to supply from a higher-cost operation being steered toward price support rather than volume.

The live RapNet index through October 2 is unchanged again, with the half-carat up 2.26 percent on the month and the one-carat essentially flat at 0.33 percent, so the firmness still sits only in the smaller goods and has not reached one-carat stones. The official September RAPI has still not printed, and the tension D-Loupe has carried for weeks stays open with it: IDEX's September report put round goods below one carat sharply lower, the opposite of this small-stone strength, and only the September RAPI reconciles the two.

The September RAPI, now about two days out and expected around October 9, is the single figure that settles whether the one-carat grade joins the small-stone firmness, and it resolves the two calls D-Loupe set for October 2, which stay open until it prints. After it, the reported United States plan to add a tariff on Indian gem and jewelry goods carries an October 18 marker that exporters are rushing to beat. On the calendar, JIS Fall opens in Miami from October 16 to 19.