Hi Dearies,

Gertie had a date last night with a wonderful man who bought her, you guessed it, the subject of today’s little exercise for your eyes only (hush, Fred) diamonds. These little precious gems that fund the African arms industry and shoot up geological elevators under high pressure are a great buy and keep well under your mattress. I’m not kidding boys and girls. What you want to do is buy a slice of the companies that dig and produce these tiny crystals, the diamond industry.

Why? The world expert used to be Al Levinson. Check out his articles and books if you want proof. Al knew all there was to know about a girl’s best friend. These stones are underpriced and take less of a hammering in bad times than almost everything else. The “girl’s best friend” moniker came after the world recovered from the dirty thirties, and it took hold because a guy who had diamonds could negotiate them anytime, when everything else was worthless or during inflation. Whatever the world financial situation, you can do it with diamonds. And take my word for it, when you want to impress a lady (even if she’s not a lady) you could do a lot worse than give her a little choker or bracelet or (be a sport) an anklet studded with clean, well-cut stones that flash in the colours of the rainbow (in a restrained loving style because we have class, darling). I don’t want to talk about last night, but let me tell you, Fred was very happy and so was I.

And the companies, not all of them but most, that grow in this little market patch, aren’t particularly scrupulous about who they crawl into bed with. That might not make governments happy or delight their morally cringing backers, but it’s great for the investors. So today, darling, as I pop Tylenols and try to remember the details of where I was last night, I’m letting the sun reflect off these gorgeous stones and thinking five percent of my portfolio isn’t too small to swing into this sector for a month or two. I’m glad I don’t have to work for a living. I like being the diva of love.

So for now, darlings, this is Gertie, your abiding angel of mercy and profit, signing off. (I can’t tell you Fred’s stories last night, because they’re buried under the Champagne he bought me and I promised to take them to the tomb and I always always keep my word, but when he was … hmmmmmmmmm…out of control for the briefest moment I pushed aside a few papers in his briefcase and saw he’d just deposited a s.u.b.s.t.a.n.t.i.a.l sum in two listed diamond companies. So it’s not just me.)