With the Biotech bubble busted and social media stocks slaughtered, it seems disappointment is spreading for the world's wealthy living off the fat of the Fed. As NY Times reports [4], on Wednesday, many in the art world converged upon Sotheby’s for the sales of Impressionist and modern art... but nearly a third of the art went unsold. The mediocre results followed an unexciting night at Christie’s on Tuesday and suggest that yet another central-bank-fueled excess-money-has-to-spill-out-of-our-silk-lined-pockets-somewhere trickle-down bubble is bursting. With Chinese property prices tumbling and PBOC cracking down on Macau money-laundering, it is perhaps no surprise that what demand Sotheby's saw was Asia buyers.
Asian buyers were by far the most active shoppers, bidding consistently by telephone through the auction house’s representatives throughout the evening. According to officials there, Asian bidders managed to snap up $63.9 million worth of art, or roughly one-third of the evening’s $219 million total. Sotheby’s had estimated the sale would bring in $218.1 million to $317.9 million. The auction house offered 71 works, and of those, 21 failed to sell.
The mediocre results followed an unexciting night at Christie’s on Tuesday. That auction house managed to sell $285.9 million, above its low estimate of $244.5 million but not close to its high of $360.4 million.
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Picasso’s “Femme dans un rocking chair,” from 1956 — was back on the block, but this time at Sotheby’s. In November, Christie’s had hoped it would sell for $8 million to $12 million... It sold for $6.3 million. Lulu Creel, who runs Sotheby’s in Mexico, took the winning bid on behalf of a client bidding by telephone.
We assume that all the excess cash is being used up for margin calls on TSLA, NFLX, TWTR, and FB "wealth" creations...