Late last week Janping Mei and Michael Moses released their analysis of the New York sales. The found the high end of the Contempoary art market providing strong returns for art owners but previously “investible” Impressionist and Modern art has merely held its own against more liquid assets with lower carrying costs. Here are their findings:

• Contemporary Evening Sales: 33 lots with previous sale information generated Avg Compound Annual Returns of 16.3%
• Impressionist & Modern Evening Sales: 34 lots with previous sale information generated Avg Compound Annual Returns of 7.6%

Here’s what Mei Moses had to say about the overall market in May:

The average of the compound annual returns (CAR) of all of the 282 lots that sold was 7.3% which is about 10% lower than our historical values for these combined collecting categories. However these returns were slightly above the returns that would have been achieved if the value of the art purchases had been invested instead in the S&P 500 Total Return index (where dividends are reinvested tax free) for the identical holding periods as the art. The average CAR for the S&P investments would have been 7.1%

Beautiful Asset Advisors: 2013 May Major NY Sales Return Analysis