Zev Weitman’s angular frame was hunched over his sooty workbench in a cramped diamond-cutting shop several floors above the buzz of Manhattan’s diamond district. But his mind was roaming a crystalline chamber, tweaking facets to coax a brilliant symphony of light from the diamond he was working against a cutting wheel.
“I’m always improvising, always searching for the perfect cut,” said Mr. Weitman, 68, who began cutting in the district four decades ago, when thousands of jewelry businesses studded a single block of 47th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. Back then, there were also thousands of cutters like Mr.

Black Diamond Financial LLC cut its position in shares of Microsoft Co. (NASDAQ:MSFT – Get Rating) by 8.5% during the 3rd quarter, according to its most recent 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The fund owned 3,335 shares of the software giant’s stock after selling 309 shares during the quarter. Black Diamond Financial LLC’s holdings in Microsoft were worth $777,000 as of its most recent SEC filing.