Editorial body
The gemstone trade has excellent trays.
Velvet.
Leather.
Carefully illuminated.
Everything looks expensive.
This is appropriate.
The goods are valuable.
But presentation can obscure economics.
Behind the tray sits:
inventory financing,
cutting yield,
labour,
rent,
insurance,
marketing,
margin,
risk,
customer acquisition,
tax,
and sometimes several layers of trading.
Source holders should understand this entire stack.
Not because downstream participants should not earn money.
They absolutely should.
The question is simply:
which margin reflects value creation, and which reflects information asymmetry?
That is the calculation source must learn.
The velvet may remain.
We are not barbarians.
We simply want the spreadsheet underneath it.