Engaging Guidelines - What Is Considered Superior, A Roller Coaster Or Fine Art Investment? - By: David Tatham

Do you enjoy roller coasters? A lot of us take pleasure in the thrill associated and never quite seem to "grow up" even as we continue to savour that summer season visit to an amusement park, only for kicks. Doing an inverted loop and screaming with your friends is one challenge, but it's not the kind of adventure that you want to savour on a daily basis while you view your retirement nest egg become subject to the acute vagaries of the current trading markets.

We have scarcely seen such uncertainty as we've been noting in recent times. We are aware that it has a lot to do with the bursting housing bubble and what we at this point realise to be an unsustainable growth in equity during that time. Whether an investment in the currency markets may be beneficial now or not is open to serious discussion, in particular since the political parties whose job it is to try and secure a difficult economic climate seem to be fairly inefficient.

If you're really not sure whether or not you should be putting quite as much of your hard-earned money and assets into stocks and shares, how many other options do you have? A lot of the best financial advisers advise that you should diversify even at the healthiest of times. Property is typically a wise idea, but other opportunities could be assumed too. Think about art for instance? Have you ever considered whether fine art investment might be a substantial and potentially rewarding part of your plan for the long run?

On the surface looking in, if you are not experienced here, the initial perception would be that fine art can indeed give back some significant profits, particularly as we hear from time to time about those incredible prices at Sotheby's. Are those particular investors just lucky, being at the absolute right place at the correct time or is there something to be said for thinking of fine art as a genuine investment?

We might try taking a little encouragement from the work of two professors at the Stern School of business at New York University. Jiangping Mei and Michael Moses put a great deal of effort and time into composing what they eventually considered to be the Mei Moses Finite Index. They utilised specific formulae along with a focused approach to compile and determine how fine art had done over time, to see what type of investment was possible.

They centred on the work of experienced artists and fundamentally calculated the main difference between the initial sales price and the latest sales price at significant auction halls in London or NYC. Some of their effort is certainly eye-opening and in one specific situation these folks were able to assess that a Turner original painting of the town of Venice produced a solid 6% yearly return during a period of more than a hundred years (from the date of the initial sale to its most recent auction release in NY) for about $35 million. Hardly to be sniffed at and in the long term almost certainly a much better return than a few of the even more recognised stocks on the traditional currency markets. Maybe you should have one more look into those signed limited edition prints that you were thinking about?

About the Author

David Tatham, specialist picture dealer for more than quarter of a century, has a detailed knowledge of Lowry's biography. Signed, limited editions and originals can be viewed and purchased from the website. http://www.lowry.co.uk

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