Sotheby's Losses More Than Double to $248m as Art Market Slumps

Posted3 months agoActive3 months ago

PaulHoule

3 points

4 comments

theguardian.comOtherstory

skepticalnegative

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Art MarketSotheby'sAuction HouseFinancial Losses

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Art Market

Sotheby's

Auction House

Financial Losses

Sotheby's auction house reported significant financial losses amid a slumping art market, sparking discussion about the potential causes and implications of this downturn.

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Discussion (4 comments)

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toomuchtodo

3 months ago

1 reply

Interesting to see this deflate alongside crypto:

Cryptocurrencies Sink as $1.5B in Bullish Bets Wiped Out - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45333947 - September 2025

paulpauper

3 months ago

2 replies

It goes to show how there are few good alternatives to tried and true stocks, e.g. VOO/SPY/QQQ. Alternative investments intended as diversification often just end up lagging and being worse overall, and also highly illiquid in the case of art.

bell-cot

3 months ago

Gold looks like a pretty good way to diversify from stock:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gold_price_in_USD.png

toomuchtodo

3 months ago

Not wrong, but important to note that the top ten companies in the S&P500 have been responsible for most of the growth since 2022 (with the bottom 490 companies flat) [1]. If art is deflating, crypto is deflating, US commercial real estate is approaching 2008 GFC crisis levels [2] [3] [4], and private equity is locked up because it is unable to exit at current "valuations" [5], this leads me to believe observed growth appears to be not grounded in fundamentals. We are an an Everything Bubble (imho) [6]. These valuations are fictional, but I cannot predict how or when this ends (either slowly, or all of a sudden).

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44701637 (citations)

[2] https://www.reuters.com/press-releases/us-commercial-real-es...

[3] https://www.avemarialaw.edu/overview-of-the-impending/

[4] https://hbr.org/2024/07/u-s-commercial-real-estate-is-headed...

[5] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44825303 (citations)

[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everything_bubble

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ID: 45336841Type: storyLast synced: 11/17/2025, 1:08:04 PM

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