As expected, the results from the regional tracking reports are very good, and supports much of what has been published over the few days on the performance of the art market. According to the BAA press release, art as an asset class continues to out perform some of the main financial indexes, such as the Standard and Poors 500 and the Financial Times all share index.
The percentage changes in the art indexes are all positive with London leading the way with nearly a 20% increase from the end of 2010.
- New York All Art 10.12%
- London All Art 19.79%
- Europe All Art 16.95
- S&P 500 Total Return 6.00%
- Financial Times All Shares 0.80%
- FTAS Total Return 2.50%
Click HERE to visit the BAA/Mei Moses art index website for more information and to download the latest press released.The Chart shows the percentage change from 2010 end-of-year values for the three new indexes of projected 2011 end of year values based on the mid year sales to date. These 2011 values assume that no additional repeat sale pairs would be added to our database between the end of June and the end of the year for each index. The table also compares the regional all art indexes with the mid year closing values of several equity indexes (S&P 500 total return, Financial Times All Shares total return etc).
London was the best performing regional all art index with a gain from year end 2010 of 19.8% followed closely by the European all art index with a gain of 17%. There is not enough data to compute a stand alone index for the continent without London at this point. We are hopeful that in a few years time we will have gathered sufficient incremental data to allow us to create a separate index for this region. Thus it is not surprising that these two indexes will be closely linked because the London data currently makes up over 70% of the additional repeats sale pairs for Europe. Both of these indexes easily outperformed the two equity indexes. The NY regional all art index was the weakest performer of this group with a gain of 10.2% but sufficient to outpace the equity indexes. It is also interesting to note that the strong performance of the traditional Chinese works of art (TCWA) collecting category during the last six months significantly affected all the art indexes. As an example the mid year return for the NY all art index would only have been 1% if the NY sales of TCWA material were excluded. Unfortunately we do not have sufficient semi annual performance history of the regional art indexes to be able to say if the current level of variation in performance between NY and the continent is usual or unusual. We will however address this issue on an annual basis in the latter part of this report.
Our New York all art index is built from data from sales that took place at Sotheby’s and Christie’s New York auction rooms for six of the seven collecting categories we study during the first half of the year. The exception is British paintings (BRP) whose sales only take place in London. The London all art index is built from data from sales for these two auction houses for five of the seven collecting categories we study. The only exceptions being American before 1950 (AMP) and Latin American paintings (LAP) whose sales only take place in New York. In addition there are several collecting categories which do not have sufficient repeat sale pairs, such as Russian or Italian art, to justify their own indexes. These works however are included in the all art index in the region their sales occurred. Therefore the Russian sales that occurred in London would be included in the London index but the Italian sales that took place in Milan would be included in the European index. The European index includes the London data as well as incremental data from sales in Amsterdam, Paris, Milan, etc. for our old master (OM19C), impressionist (IMPMOD) and post war (PWC) collecting categories. Traditional Chinese works of art (TSWA) sales take place in London, New York and Hong Kong. All but the Hong Kong sales are included in their relevant regional indexes except Hong Kong whose sales are included in the world all art index.
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