Chanos Says the Market is Showing Its Sotheby’s Tell

Jim Chanos spoke to Reuters Global Investment Outlook Summit in New York today and pointed to Sotheby’s stock price as an indication of a runaway market:

Chanos said that sharp rises in the share price of Sotheby’s, the auction house, has historically occurred at around the same time froth in the markets peak.

“Every time we see some sort of excess in the marketplace Sotheby’s” stock moves from about $10 to $50, then “collapses.”

Sotheby’s, currently the target of an activist campaign by Third Point’s Dan Loeb, was trading at $51.96 midday Tuesday on the New York Stock Exchange.

It began the year trading around $34. The stock price “is more an indicator of what the 1 percent is doing than anything else,” Chanos said.

Short-seller Chanos says oil majors increasingly look like ‘value traps’ (Reuters)