Art is on my mind these days. Whenever Ellen and I travel, we look for local artists and generally buy something for our home. Whatever we buy, it could turn out to be a better investment than the market at this point :).
In April 2007 I started getting concerned for the market based on the price action in Sotheby’s . Since than, I have checked in monthly . I decided to check back in on Sotheby’s today. It has been a pretty violent correction, but if you look at the historical spikes (1989 and 1999), market tops are in for now .
In 1989, Sotheby’s fell 66 percent pretty fast and bottomed a year later. In 1999, Sotheby’s fell 75 plus percent and we did not bottom in the stock or the market for 4 years.
The less than 50 percent decline in Sotheby’s says that we may not have much more in way of price, but MUCH more in way of time before the market gets good legs.
Keep doing less and taking small jabs if you must participate.
Guys on Bloomberg were talking about this same leading indicator.
Portfolio.com had a story on the 15th: Sotheby’s lowered expectations for an auction from $40M to $29M…”because of the economy”…then it ended up seeing $42.6M, after they added art to the show and Bono worked the crowd.
my two cents: That’s deep, if you want to think about it. It kind of supports the idea that “the market can talk itself into a recession” – Former NYC Mayor Ed Koch (about a month or so ago)
Sotheby’s story link: http://www.portfolio.com/culture-lifestyle/culture-inc/arts/2008/02/15/Red-Auction-and-Market-Signals
howard next time you are in NYC maybe you would like to buy one of my paintings.
John – good stuff but we buy
abstract contemporary.
McLarty as per bloomberg – they must read my blog :)
thanks howard
howard,
funny that you picked bid. it’s a stock that i marked down for a short sale. i had an old master’s painting in the 1/25/08 auction. no sale along with many others that did not sell. reminds me of manhattan real estate. the renoirs and modiglianis sell and bring the averages up but the rest struggle. along with real estate the bottom is murky.