Sensitivity of the art market to price volatility

Abstract

The purpose of the article: The art market becomes very popular among investors, when there is strong turbulence on the stock market. In times of calm, the art market is used by investors to diversify risk and build more efficient investment portfolios according to the Markovitz’s theory. The aim of this paper is to: (i) present the peculiarity of investment on the art market, represented by art market indexes in comparison to traditional investments in other financial market segments (money market, equity indexes and commodity market), (ii) to verify the hypothesis of normality of the distribution of rates of return of the analyzed art market indices as well as (iii) to analyze calendar effects occurrence on the art market. Methodology: Comparison of rates of return on the stock, bond, commodity and money markets with rates on the art market in four different time intervals. For each of the analyzed periods, an income-risk map was presented, taking into account the spectrum of financial instruments, including six art indexes: Old Masters, 19th Century, Modern art, Post War art, Contemporary art and Global art. The hypothesis of normality of the distribution of rates of return of the art market indices for four analyzed periods was verified with the use of Jarque-Bera test. Results of the research: Comparison of rates of return on the stock market and art market leads to the conclusion that their relationship depends on the period chosen. For two of the analyzed periods, the rates of return on the stock market were higher than on the art market, but for others periods, the opposite. The distribution of quarterly rates of return resulted to be a normal distribution for almost all of analyzed indices and time periods. Calendar effects were observed in the case of four analyzed indexes.