Diamond futures may be on their way aback as exchange-traded instruments, accumulation says

If diplomacy appear together, chunk may become a trader’s best friend.

Investors accept been appliance futures and derivatives diplomacy in metals, agronomical products, currencies and added risk-related investments to barrier adjoin losses for decades.

Now, a accumulation is aggravating to add design diplomacy to the annual of exchange-traded instruments.

The Rapaport Group, a design amount and advice provider, will authority the aboriginal of planned annual online design auctions Monday through Thursday. Transaction prices will be acclimated to actualize an basis in hopes of developing a design futures market.

“We’re creating a fresh akin of accuracy for design prices,” said Martin Rapaport, administrator of the Rapaport Group. “It’s activity to accessible up a affluence of opportunities for the design market.”

Bidding will be for 210 lots, anniversary lot a distinct stone, and will be accessible to the design barter and banking institutions. Consumers can admission the bargain via a registered bazaar participant. Bargain agreement will be atom cash, chargeless on board, with a 3 percent agency answerable to sellers, who will be paid aural bristles business canicule of the auction’s close.

All the allocution about design derivatives isn’t new.

In 1972, 194 design diplomacy were traded on the West Coast Bolt Barter over a two anniversary aeon afore prices burst and the barter concluded design futures trading, according to the Design Registry, commendation columnist Edward Jay Epstein.

“It’s been approved before,” said David Prager, administrator of communications for DeBeers, the world’s better design producer. “Let’s see what happens, but there’s not an assessment from DeBeers.”

Diamonds, agnate to added commodities, are angry to added bread-and-butter indicators like chump appeal and inflation, Rapaport said.

Critics say design futures would be adamantine to amount because anniversary design is unique, unlike, for example, gold banknote in connected quantities and purity.

The bargain will clue prices for one specific blazon of design and after may annex out to added types, Rapaport responded.

Another critic, whose aggregation is aggressive adjoin Rapaport to actualize appraisement for approaching exchange-traded contracts, additionally has advisedly about the auction.

“I absolutely don’t shop for into the abstraction of appliance a breakable to set the bazaar prices,” said Charles Wyndham, architect of PolishedPrices.com, a design amount and advice platform.

“To alpha advancing out and adage this is activity to be cellophane and a abject for a derivatives market, I aloof don’t see it,” Wyndham said. “Are his mates behest for the stones to actualize a market?”

Rapaport said breakable offers are acceptable means to actualize an basis for a futures bazaar because they absorb assorted buyers and sellers who are beneath no compulsion. The auctions will accommodate atom banknote transaction prices, not aloof allurement prices, he said.

“Auctions are a clear, brittle brittle agent to observe,” he said. “It’s free, open, competitive, able markets. We apperceive who the buyers and sellers are. There are absolute buyers and absolute sellers.”

He added that back Rapaport moves to the futures bazaar stage, the accumulation will go through regulators.

“At this date I anticipate this is a altogether accepted auction,” Rapaport said. “We are not trading any stones, we are not diplomacy or diplomacy anything.”

Rapaport said there are “absolutely” no conflicts of absorption with the design auction. The Rapaport Accumulation serves as a agent and allowance abode but “we don’t own any of the product.”

The accumulation will alone advance to the futures bazaar date if the trading can be inclusive, cellophane and accept authoritative approval, Rapaport said. If all that gets done, design futures diplomacy could activate trading in two years on an exchange.

Wyndham said PolishedPrices is advancing forth with its own diplomacy for a design derivatives market.

“We’re in discussions with a accurate exchange,” Wyndham said. “We haven’t active any affidavit or anything.” He beneath to analyze the barter or its home country but said the aggregation has done due diligence.

Wyndham said PolishedPrices has been approached by several exchanges, including the Chicago Lath of Trade.

“They did acquaintance us,” he said, abacus that a CBOT adumbrative fabricated a presentation at a affair about design diplomacy organized by PolishedPrices in Antwerp in June.

Mary Haffenberg, backer for CME Group, which afresh bought CBOT, beneath to affirm whether that presentation took abode or any articles the barter may cycle out in the future.

“We are consistently attractive at fresh articles based on chump demand,” she said.

Wyndham envisions PolishedPrices’ role as a supplier of a broad cut design amount annual based on multi-source priced diplomacy that could be acclimated to actualize an basis sponsored by ABN Amro, a ample lender to the design industry.

“There’s activity to be some anatomy of acquired arrangement aural 12 months, apparently eventually than that,” Wyndham said, citation abstracts from India’s ICICI Coffer that the bazaar for design derivatives could ability $150 billion (€108 billion) to $200 billion (€144 billion). ABN Amro — which was at the June affair in Antwerp forth with ICICI, according to Wyndham — says there is “tremendous” burden from the alfresco advance association for the advance option.

Such a arrangement would acquiesce the industry to administer risk, and chunk are the alone cogent commodity not traded with futures and derivatives, Wyndham said. The diplomacy would additionally accommodate advance opportunities for alfresco investors, creating clamminess for the design industry, he said.

An ABN Amro adumbrative who could allege on the design industry couldn’t be accomplished for comment, nor could an ICICI representative.

A adumbrative from DeBeers was additionally at the meeting, but didn’t accomplish a presentation, Wyndham said. DeBeers deals in asperous stones and any futures diplomacy would acceptable be for cut diamonds, he said.

Rosalind Kainyah, administrator of accessible diplomacy for DeBeers, said it isn’t bright how design derivatives would assignment back anniversary design is unique.

When asked if DeBeers is anxious such markets could affect its appraisement scheme, she said: “It’s a academic catechism that’s difficult to answer.”

Matt Whittaker is a contributor of Dow Jones Newswires

Rival attacks Rapaport’s design plan

By Michael Bleby in Johannesburg

Published: September 17 2007 03:00 | Last updated: September 17 2007 03:00

Read the commodity by beat here.

Martin Rapaport, architect of the world’s better diamond-trading platform, will this anniversary activate the accessible design tenders that will pave the way for a adapted futures bazaar by the alpha of 2009. But his capital battling says it will not work.

The four-day bargain that starts today marks the alpha of the annual internet-based sales of alone stones that Mr Rapaport’s Fresh York-based aggregation hold. Abstracts from these tenders will anatomy a appraisement basis from which he diplomacy to advance diamond-based futures diplomacy overseen by the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

Derivatives for bolt such as gold and pork bellies accept continued existed, but the absence of reliable appraisement abstracts so far has captivated up their appliance to diamonds. The huge aberration in amount amid altered stones is allotment of the problem. But appetence for design derivatives is strong, with a bazaar annual $200bn a year by some estimates.

“When you breach that coffer amid the banking area and concrete design sectors, a affluence of opportunities is activity to accessible up,” Mr Rapaport says.

Transparent appraisement would end the clandestineness that has until now absitively prices abaft bankrupt doors. It would additionally abolish resale opportunities for the abounding intermediaries begin amid architect and retailer. Design derivatives would acquiesce retailers and manufacturers to barrier adjoin approaching needs – important, accustomed the billow in appeal from India, China and the Gulf arena – rather than diplomacy up ample inventories to ensure supply. Industry debt has angled in the accomplished four years to added than $12bn, abundantly through the buying-up of inventories.

Nonetheless, Mr Rapaport’s arrangement is “intellectually flawed”, says Charles Wyndham, architect of website polishedprices.com, which publishes amount abstracts from a cardinal of design traders and is alone in talks with ABN Amro coffer to actualize derivatives.

The attenuated ambit of stones Mr Rapaport will action in his September tenders – those of one-carat in admeasurement and assertive grades – will not admittance extrapolation of prices for all stones or booty into annual the weighting of altered types of stones according to their frequency, Mr Wyndham says. Tenders are additionally affected to manipulation, he says.

Mr Rapaport says it is accessible to atom distortions in a breakable process. He concedes that his arrangement does not break all the problems, but says it is a start. “The blemish actuality is real. It begins the action of mitigating issues of accident administration and finance,” he says.