The index stops falling

Rapaport reported that all four major diamond categories posted flat or positive figures in July, the first such month since March 2025. The RAPI for 1-carat diamonds held stable, ending 13 consecutive months of declines. The smaller sizes led the move: the 0.30-carat index rose 1.6 percent, the 0.50-carat index gained 1.8 percent for its best month since March 2025, and the 3-carat maintained stability with a 0.2 percent uplift. After more than a year in which every monthly print came in lower, a broad flat-to-up reading is the clearest signal yet that natural prices have found a floor.

For the retail counter, the shift from thirteen months of declines to a flat-to-positive month changes the buying calculus more than the size of the move suggests. A market in which next month's price is expected lower is a market in which no one restocks, because holding inventory costs money and waiting pays. A month in which the small sizes turn up, with 0.30-carat goods rising 1.6 percent and 0.50-carat goods gaining 1.8 percent, removes that penalty. Those are the sizes that fill the everyday case, and their recovery matters more to a working jeweler than any single large-stone result.

De Beers carries the cost of the reset

The stabilization at the index level came at a measurable price for the largest miner. Sales revenue from De Beers' three second-quarter sights totaled $665 million, a 44 percent decrease from the $1.2 billion recorded a year earlier, according to the Anglo American report cited by JCK. The per-carat average sales price fell roughly 37 percent, from $174 to $110. The two figures are connected: the miner let realized prices drop far enough that the sightholders could clear boxes and rebuild margin, which is a precondition for the index turning positive downstream. The pipeline healing at retail and the miner's revenue decline are the same event viewed from opposite ends.

The De Beers figures read as the deliberate cost of that recovery. A miner does not let its per-carat realized price fall from $174 to $110, a 37 percent cut, by accident. It does so to move boxes that were not clearing and to let sightholders rebuild the margin that keeps them buying. The 44 percent revenue decline to $665 million across three sights is the invoice for resetting the pipeline, and the payoff shows up downstream in the RAPI finally holding. The two sets of numbers belong in the same sentence, because one bought the other.

Lab-grown holds a narrow band

On the created-stone side, prices remain low but no longer in free fall. A 1-carat lab diamond costs about $747, a 2-carat about $1,650, and a 3-carat about $2,361, per Liori Diamonds, with recent prices ticking up slightly by 3.32 percent. That follows a 2025 in which wholesale levels dropped significantly, around 26 percent in some segments, per Rosec Jewels. The 2026 data reveals only modest fluctuations: slight upticks in select categories, flatlines elsewhere, and minor softening in others. The pattern on both sides of the aisle is the same one, which is stabilization after a steep correction rather than a rebound.

Retail earnings frame the demand

The specialist retail read supports a steadier picture. Signet Jewelers reported full-year Fiscal 2026 sales of $6.81 billion on a same-store sales increase of 1.3 percent against FY25, with average unit retail up approximately 7 percent. Diluted EPS came in at $7.08 and adjusted diluted EPS at $9.60, compared with $8.94 in FY25. Rising AUR alongside positive comps indicates the customer is trading up per piece even where unit counts are flat, a mix that supports the firmer wholesale prints. The week's broader trade context is covered in our trade week wrap, and the luxury-house earnings that bracket the category appear in the industry roundup.

The stone side is not moving in isolation. The same steadying is visible at the top of the watch market, where a record auction season and firm secondary prices point the same direction, detailed in our watch market recap. When metals, stones and watches all stop falling in the same month, the retailer stocking for the fall has fewer reasons to sit on capital, and the Signet numbers suggest the mid-market customer is already there.

Where the market stands

The July data does not signal a recovery so much as an end to the decline. Natural prices flat to modestly higher across every size, lab-grown holding a narrow band after a 26 percent 2025 drawdown, and a specialist retailer posting positive comps on higher AUR. The open question for August is durability: whether the RAPI holds its July gains rather than giving them back, and whether De Beers' $110 per-carat realized price marks a bottom or a way station. The next sight results will answer the first half of that. The September retail restock will answer the second.