In his book Talking Prices, Olav Velthuis points out that the collapse of the art market in the early 1990s resulted in a widespread shift away from the ‘superstar’ pricing of the go-go 80s, and towards a ‘prudent’ pricing in the 1990s. Art dealers saw the watershed collapse of fantastic(al) prices as a moment not …
From Felix Salmon (whose blog is so good it makes me not want to write anything, just point a big finger at him) comes a story that pops up from time to time. Usually it is some kind of technical snafu, when a trader sits on the keyboard or accidentally keys in a sell rather …
I want to talk about dark pools of liquidity, but to do so, I need to first talk about financial markets and how prices work. Bear with me for the background. The dark pools post is coming. Prices in financial markets are not like prices in other kinds of markets. When you buy gas, you …
Jennifer Lena and I have a new video up, a continuation of our conversation about the relationship between cultural value and monetary value. We’re talking about devaluation, specifically burned art – in the high art and pop art worlds. And we’re circling around a discussion of spheres/circuits/arenas of value. Burned Art and Murakami from Peter …
As an experiment in sociology and blogging, Jenn (from whatisthewhat.wordpress.com) and I have put together a brief video on culture and markets, the beginning of what we hope will be a conversation at the intersection of culture, sociology, and economics. We’ll work on the lighting and switch off the big-head/small-head, but we hope you like …
Commensuration, the making comparable of qualitative differences via a common third metric, is valuable for its theoretical contributions to cultural economic sociology. It is a process that makes some things visible and hides others, resulting in an extremely impressive if underrated shaping of the social world. Qualitative distinctions across individual student applicants to college, for …
I want to re-tell a story from Frank Partnoy’s F.I.A.S.C.O., but a bit of background on Collatoralized Mortgage Obligations is first in order. CMOs, and their generalized cousin Collatoralized Debt Obligations (CDOs) are the current culprits in the sub-prime meltdown, so this is probably useful to know practically as it is to know theoretically. Also, …
One of the better anomalies is about to occur, the so-called January Effect in financial markets. Back in the day, stocks would jump in the first 3-4 days of January as the depressed prices from the end-of-year selloff would rebound. Of course, as people became savvy about it, the effect shifted a bit to December (the so-called Santa Claus rally), but still, it’s one of those funny plate tectonics where institutional effects (US tax law) meets individual psychology (optimistic January) meets collective social practice (being on vacation for the New Year holiday).
Happy January Effect.
Tricky tricky Dr. Lena. In her discussion of the great Canadian post-Woodstock, train-tour extravaganza, she asks the question: how should we price cultural stuff?
There’s a lot to say about Bryant Urstadt’s article about quant traders in this past fall’s Technology Review (free reg required), called “The Blow-up.” Combined with Amir Khandani and Andrew Lo’s “What Happened to the Quants in August 2007″ (.pdf link), it gives a fuller picture of how quantitative finance is altering markets.
I participated in a panel earlier this week at Columbia called ‘Unraveling the Art Market’.
A proposal that comes around from time to time has re-emerged in light of the skyrocketing prices of oil in the global markets. As oil pushes towards $100/barrel, the petroleum secretary of India has proposed abolishing the trading of oil in commodity markets.
November 8, 2007 – 9:51 am
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By Peter
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Posted in Prices
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As my friend Chuck says, even the crappy Picasso’s are bringing in $30 million. What in the world is going on? The all-art index is up 21% in the first half of 2007, compared to 14% for the S&P500. The November ArtNews reports that Sotheby’s and Christie’s are offering upwards of $1 billion in guarantees this year. Sotheby’s and Christie’s sold $7.5 billion in art in 2006, and more this year. Add Phillips de Pury & Co. (which emphasizes contemporary, where the action is), and it’s surreal.
In an earlier attempt to think through pricing, I was trying to understand the importance of public, baseline prices from which traders, investors, potential buyers and sellers could determine commodity prices. This leads me to discussions of ‘dark pools’ of liquidity..
An article in the NYT on the shift away from open outcry today, which gets it right and gets it wrong. The right part is that the shift and merger of the CME and CBOT onto a single floor located at the CBOT spells the end for open outcry. It’s a natural transition point, and …