2009 Third Quarter Mei Moses Tracking Report

I guess we have to balance the good news from the Sotehby's impressionist and modern sale of last evening with the just released Mei Moses 3rd quarter tracking report values.  The tracking report is showing all categories are down for the first 3 quarters of the year.  I guess the index results are not too surprising to many who closely follow the fine and decorative arts. Hopefully by the end of the year these figures will show signs of a turn around from the 4th quarter sales and the full year will not look nearly as poor.  Only time will tell. Comparing the 3rd quarter and 6 month figures shows the markets appear to have at least stabilized to some extent, perhaps that is a good sign the bleeding has stopped.  Now we wait for the turn-around.

2009 Third Quarter Mei Moses® Tracking Report Index Values:

• All Art Index down 32.4% 
• American Before 1950: Down 19.1% 
• Impressionist and Modern: Down 18.1% 
• Old Master and 19th Century: Down 30.1% 
• Post War and Comtemporary down 36.2%

The 6 moth figurs were:

• All Art Index down 31%
• American Before 1950: Down 16.3%
• Impressionist and Modern: Down 13.4%
• Old Master and 19th Century: Down 34.5%
• Post War and Comtemporary: Down 36.5%

From a press release on the Beautiful Asset Advisors -Mei Moses Fine Art Index site.

Through the first ten months of the year the strongest collecting category continued to be Impressionist & Modern although with a widening loss now of almost 18%. It was followed closely by the American before 1950 collecting category with a loss of 19% from year end 2008. The only collecting category to show positive growth this quarter was the old master and 19th century area with a loss contracting from 34.5% to 30%.
The weakest collecting category remains Post War and Contemporary with a cumulative loss now approaching 36%. This is on a par with its loss at the end of the second quarter from year end 2008 and still worse than its drop of 32% in the first quarter.

We should also mention that the average of the compound annual return for each work that entered our database for the Post War and Contemporary collecting category during the second quarter, based on New York and London sales, was a negative 0.1% and this quarter it was a negative 1.7%. This negative average return for the works sold in this collecting category for two quarters in a row is a very rare occurrence in our experience and illustrates the extremely weak performance of this category in the current market.

The Post War and Contemporary category was the hottest category in the art market over the last 25 years, and had an average annual gain of 20% per year over the ten years prior to 2008. It showed the largest decline of any of the collecting categories in the first three quarters of 2009. If the market does not improve from the end of October until the end of this year, it will be on a path to almost match the worst annual performance for this index since the record decline of 41% in 1991. The index for this category is in jeopardy of losing 50% of its value in the period since the end of 2007.

When all the collecting category data are combined into our All Art database, the All Art market index showed a slight decline from a mid year loss of 31 % to a current loss of 32.5 an improvement however from the crushing 35% loss of the first quarter. Thus the possibility of a “W” shaped recovery. This still puts the market on target for the second largest annual decrease since 1925. The record decrease of 39% for the All Art Index was recorded in 1991 and the index did not regain its 1990 highpoint until 2003.

Click HERE to read the full report and view charts.