wndysrf Posted April 3, 2007 Report Share Posted April 3, 2007 PigMen Paradise continues in full swing, with hordes of newly-minted billionaires all scrambling around, tripping all over each other to buy art at outrageous prices. Excerpts from today's WSJ Bidding Up Sotheby's By KAREN RICHARDSON and KELLY CROW Art-loving investors who might not be raising a bid paddle at Sotheby's coming spring sale are betting on the auctioneer's stock instead. Sotheby's shares have come a long way since 2000, when a price-fixing scandal and a murky future plagued the New York-based auction house. Restored like an Old Master, the stock today is a play on the world's swelling ranks of affluent art buyers -- and investors are betting that they will spend big this year at the auctioneer's two biggest rounds of art sales. "When people make money, they want to put it in things that will appreciate in value, and that's art," says Richard Rosen, manager of J. & W. Seligman's Smaller Cap Value Fund. A lot rides on four weeks in the spring and fall, when the major auction houses hold sales in London and New York of impressionist, modern, and contemporary art. Those sales typically account for more than 65% of Sotheby's auction revenue, according to stock-research firm Sidoti & Co. Last year, Sotheby's sold $3.7 billion at auction, up 36% from a year earlier. In the unpredictable art world, investors guess how the big auctions will do by parsing the success of preceding sales and the asking prices of items up for bid in auction catalogs. anal cysts say Sotheby's, with a market value of about $3 billion, is just in the third year of a typical five-to-seven-year cycle, supported largely by diverse, wealthy markets in Europe, Russia, Asia, and the Middle East. Some Wall Street types have also socked a portion of their latest bonuses into fine art and collectibles. "We have focused and continue to focus on deploying our resources where they can hopefully be most productive," says William Ruprecht, Sotheby's chief executive. A Sotheby's auctioneer takes bids for Picasso's 'Dora Maar au chat,' which was sold to an anonymous buyer for $95.2 million. Already this year, global sales for the first quarter, excluding New York's "Asia Week" event from last month, have brought in $638.5 million, up 51% from a year earlier, according to the company. Those big receipts, along with upcoming big-ticket items, such as philanthropist David Rockefeller's Rothko piece titled "White Center (Yellow, Pink and Lavender on Rose)" going on the block for a tongue-wagging $40 million, have convinced many investors that Sotheby's earnings -- and its stock price -- are in for a pop. The company this year also is collecting higher fees from its buyers, who must pay 20% on the first $500,000 of the hammer price, up from $200,000, and 12% for anything above $500,000. So far, collectors' reaction to the increase has been muted. One must wonder, who would pay $95 million for one painting?? They could have Riverboated that $95 million into a myriad of other speculations and turned it into a Vast Fortune. For example, that clown could have bought GROW at $18 three weeks ago, and could have parlayed his $95 million into $166 million. Or, he could have bought POT on the breakout day in July 2006 for $95 and Riverboated it all the way up to $164 today. Hey, what's not to like???? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tdultima Posted April 3, 2007 Report Share Posted April 3, 2007 still turning up from an intermediate bottom nothing has changed buy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LeeWhee Posted April 3, 2007 Report Share Posted April 3, 2007 SOX closed at 468 today. Is that important? Apparently not, since the SOX has traded between 468-472 for 22 consecutive weeks, not to mention 26 of the past 30 weeks. Is there some significance to 468-472? Well, it's the exact midpoint of the multi-year SOX range between 385ish and 560ish. So it has been hovering right in the middle since last September. Is it bullish? Is it bearish? Place yer betz. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wndysrf Posted April 3, 2007 Author Report Share Posted April 3, 2007 From The "Beat A Dead Horse" Department. Total put/call closed today at the high tick of 1.12 And an unnamed newsletter writer came out with his April report today. The one of very few who has stayed resolutely bullish throughout the last 4 years. Here are some stats I found in his piece: 10-day put/call reached the highest in NYSE history on March 14, 2007 with a reading of 1.32, far surpassing the prior record of 1.23 recorded on May 24, 2006. From February 21 to March 16, the daily put/call closed at 1.00 for 18 consecutive sessions, a new all-time record 18-day put/call reading of 1.27. The prior 60-day put/call record of 1.05 was recorded in August 4, 2006, near the beginning of an 8 month rally in the SPX. Today's 60-day put/call broke that record and now stands at 1.06. The 10-day moving average of the ARMS index closed at a record 2.65 on February 25, 2007. This broke the prior record of 2.05 in October 1997, the beginning of Fleckenstein's "Moonshot Rally" into the all-time closing highs in March 2000. Similarly high readings have persisted throughout the month of March. FWIW..... I know its just useless trivia, and none of it should be used to determine future market direction. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
I_Am_Madness Posted April 3, 2007 Report Share Posted April 3, 2007 Nice action all around, but the volume is a bit light for a breakout day. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wndysrf Posted April 3, 2007 Author Report Share Posted April 3, 2007 More rings being purchased by the Plutocrats and the PigMen for wives, girlfriends, significant others, etc.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LeeWhee Posted April 3, 2007 Report Share Posted April 3, 2007 still turning up from an intermediate bottom nothing has changed buy 573368[/snapback] Compared with the past three years, it's a pretty funny-looking intermed bottom when you look at the BPI charts. Looks more like we haven't completed the top as opposed to completed the bottom. Since 2004, the i/t tops did not occur coincident with peaks in the BPI. It took from 2-4 months to finish things off. For example, the BPSPX topped in Jan04 but the SPX didn't top until Mar04 (1% higher, 2 months later.) In 2005, the BPSPX topped in Jan but the SPX didn't top until Mar (1% higher, 2 months later.) And in 2006, the BPSPX topped in Jan but the SPX didn't top until May (2.3% higher, 4 months later.) In 2007, however, the SPX broke down exactly coincident with the peak in the BPSPX. So either this is something new, or the recent 1461 peak in SPX wasn't an I/T top. Have no idea if this BPSPX/SPX pattern will continue, but if so, look for the SPX to make an I/T top between 1478-1495 sometime b/w May-Jun. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wndysrf Posted April 3, 2007 Author Report Share Posted April 3, 2007 Green light given to speculators today: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wndysrf Posted April 3, 2007 Author Report Share Posted April 3, 2007 Another new closing high. More gloating at my inept investing acumen. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shorty Posted April 3, 2007 Report Share Posted April 3, 2007 Looks like RE has bottomed. The next great up wave of RE wealth creation is underway. Git some before it's all gone, they ain't makin' no more. Scoop up them blue-chip lenders and builders while they're still bargains. Hurry! Don't miss out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brisbane Bear Posted April 3, 2007 Report Share Posted April 3, 2007 One must wonder, who would pay $95 million for one painting?? Alan Bond paid $48 million for a painting back in the 80s. He went bankrupt not long after and spent the next 20 yrs fighting court cases,spent 3 or 4 yrs in jail and generally ended his career in disgrace. He also won the Americas Cup yacht race. First time anyone had ever beat the yanks. He was a national hero for a while. Some say the painting was cursed... Good call on shorting oil and going long tech Windy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wndysrf Posted April 3, 2007 Author Report Share Posted April 3, 2007 Whee!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mdporter Posted April 3, 2007 Report Share Posted April 3, 2007 Home ATM closed? No problem! There's always the backup plan... credit card debt! Only this time, the sheeple will run up the balance, and not be able to fold their spending into their home loans. Borrowing Like There's No Tomorrow Consumers are piling up credit-card debt at the fastest pace in years, and the housing downturn may be the reason. If households continue to rely on credit cards, it could leave them more financially vulnerable to any further economic slowdown. In January, revolving credit, made up largely of credit-card debt, was up $52.7 billion, or 6.4% from a year ago. Consumers haven't racked up revolving debt at such a clip since late 2001. And the pace looks set to quicken in February. A large chunk of the $6.8 billion increase expected by economists likely will be in the form of new credit-card debt, as nonrevolving credit probably cooled off with slower auto sales. The timing of the acceleration in revolving credit suggests consumers are turning to their credit cards as a partial replacement for reduced mortgage equity withdrawal, says Goldman Sachs (GS ) senior economist Ed McKelvey. According to his calculations, increases in revolving credit have offset about 20% of the decline in cash-out refinancing or increased home-equity lines of credit since late 2005. highway to hell Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cwd Posted April 3, 2007 Report Share Posted April 3, 2007 Anybody want to know why the market refuses to down? From Mish. ?Companies aren't wary only about spending. They also seem unwilling to borrow for anything other than financing stock buybacks and taking their businesses private. Recent Fed data show that nonfinancial corporations last year, on net, retired a record $602.1 billion in equity. In the fourth quarter alone, they set aside $701.2 billion, measured at an annual rate, far more than the additional $604.6 billion they borrowed in the credit markets. Companies seem interested in cutting their overall cost of capital, but they don't seem very hot on taking advantage of cheaper capital to invest in expanding their operations Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mdporter Posted April 3, 2007 Report Share Posted April 3, 2007 The stock market is not reality. The stock market is not reality. The stock market is not reality. The stock market is not reality. The stock market is not reality. The stock market is not reality. The stock market is not reality. The stock market is not reality. The stock market is not reality. The stock market is not reality. The stock market is not reality. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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