MUS: Year-end share price forecast, page-47

It is the DeBeers approach. Once you have consistent supply you can create greater demand via marketing. What has stopped the big jewellery brands from promoting rubies is not a lack of interest, but a lack of supply to support the marketing - after all there is little point creating demand for a product that you can’t acquire.

The great thing is once you have enough supply to support marketing you can increase the marketing ahead of the supply and ramp up prices. DeBeers was able to massively increase volume and prices for diamonds by ensuring that their marketing was ahead of demand. For the first time in history the same thing can be done with rubies, but with the added kicker that unlike diamonds, rubies really are rare. DeBeers managed to create a monopoly for a while, but in the end diamonds are just too common. We do not have this problem with rubies. I think many people miss the strategic long term value of MUS.