Based on this source, art might be interesting to look into for large investors: it may be largely uncorrelated with global equities, and total asset value is estimated at $3 trillion, or ~3% of global equities. To get exposure, one could try to buy shares of major auction houses (none of which are currently publicly traded). Curious to hear what people think.
I only skimmed the linked source but my rough impression is that I’m fairly bearish on art, mainly because there’s no expectation that it will appreciate. The linked article doesn’t really present evidence to the contrary—the only relevant bit I saw was a graph showing appreciation from 2000 to 2010. 10 years of appreciation is almost meaningless, I’d want to see more like 50 years of data showing an asset class has positive real return.
Perhaps it would be worth buying art if you have some reason to believe you can outperform the market at predicting which pieces will be more valuable in the future. The art market is probably less efficient than more liquid financial markets, but on priors I wouldn’t expect to be able to pick “winning” art pieces.
Based on this source, art might be interesting to look into for large investors: it may be largely uncorrelated with global equities, and total asset value is estimated at $3 trillion, or ~3% of global equities. To get exposure, one could try to buy shares of major auction houses (none of which are currently publicly traded). Curious to hear what people think.
I only skimmed the linked source but my rough impression is that I’m fairly bearish on art, mainly because there’s no expectation that it will appreciate. The linked article doesn’t really present evidence to the contrary—the only relevant bit I saw was a graph showing appreciation from 2000 to 2010. 10 years of appreciation is almost meaningless, I’d want to see more like 50 years of data showing an asset class has positive real return.
Perhaps it would be worth buying art if you have some reason to believe you can outperform the market at predicting which pieces will be more valuable in the future. The art market is probably less efficient than more liquid financial markets, but on priors I wouldn’t expect to be able to pick “winning” art pieces.