Hedge fund managers, most notably Steven Cohen (SAC Capital) and Ken Griffin (Citadel Investment Group), have become notorious buyers of expensive and trendy contemporary art. It would make sense, then, that the recent poor performance from many mighty hedge funds would have an effect on art prices because hedge fund managers stand to make less money (or perhaps even, gasp, lose money).
According to a recent Bloomberg article, "the art market will soften...but it may not happen for six months to a year." However, the article also quotes a Moody's analyst who testified that "we've seen record levels of consigning,..and lots of deals are being done." But I tend to agree with the first source -- the art market will inevitably soften as hedge fund managers have less disposable income to invest in their art collections.
This piece, like many others pieces of news, proves the 'domino effect' is unbelievably at-present in the world. News of poor earnings from an American company can effect foreign markets, credit issues in America have created a worldwide sell-off during the last month, increased volatility has hurt many large hedge funds, etc. As I've said before, "gone are the days when simple cause-and-effect can be used to analyze a news event."
Correlation between the art market and hedge fund performance?
Posted Aug 17th 2007 5:29PM by Kevin Kelly
Filed under: Industry, Money and Finance Today
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