What makes the perfect investment remain elusive? Competition for stock picking has changed during the pandemic and today, investors are scrambling to face up to even greater disruptions to the stock markets. Namely, the top stocks are trading at 35x P/E — the highest valuation levels since the dot-com crash of 2000.
Though the pandemic blew the lid off regular trading, it’s not all bad news for those searching for the right pot to invest their wealth into. When top investment experts at market heavyweight Bloomberg were asked where they would invest $100,000 of their own money, the overwhelming majority suggested one age-old but little-thought-of depository for high wealth assets: art.
It is little wonder that investing in some of the world’s finest art pieces remains a popular choice for investors. After all, titans of wealth, from the Rockefellers of yore to the likes of Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and Eric Schmidt today, are all also avid art collectors. In fact, two-thirds of ultra-high-net-worth collectors allocate between 10% and 50% of their overall portfolios to art. The best news for many of those at the start of their investment journey is that despite this boom, very few know how to invest in this high-performing market.
Why investing in art makes sense
It is not only art aficionados who will be interested to learn that Contemporary Art prices have outperformed S&P 500 returns by 174% between 1995 and 2020. This is particularly impressive when considering the 20-year bull run that just took place in the investment world over that same period. As an asset class, art has even trounced other conventional ‘safety hedge’ investments like gold and real estate by nearly two fold.
What’s more, Deloitte projects the total wealth held in art to explode by 58% by 2026. This means that the asset class, already sitting at $6 trillion, has massive potential for returns.
For instance, a Basquiat painting originally sold in 1984 for $19,000. In 2017, it fetched $110,500,000 at auction, resulting in a 5,814% gross return on investment. In other words, that painting appreciated by 30% every year.
Paintings selling for hundreds of millions of dollars isn’t an anomaly: it’s the new normal. At another auction that same year, a Saudi royale purchased a single painting for $450,000,000.
It may go without saying, but art has quietly remained as potentially the most lucrative investment one could make.
Adding art to your investment portfolio
Normally, you might need tens, or even hundreds, of millions to build a well-diversified art portfolio. However, few people realise that thanks to the recently enacted JOBS Act Title II, purchasing contemporary art is now possible at a fraction of the typical purchase point. This private equity option enables both entrepreneurs and small businesses to receive and publicly raise investment funding.
Exploring your options in line with this bill is step one. Creating an account with the world’s first specialist investment platform for art, Masterworks, comes next. Masterworks allows investors to buy shares of multimillion-dollar paintings by world-famous artists like Warhol, Monet, and Basquiat. With this online platform, names you might recognise from MoMA or the Louvre can easily become assets in your investment portfolio.
Early adopters of Masterworks cashed in on a net annualised return of 32% from a Banksy painting named ‘Mona Lisa’. It was the platform’s first sale and garnered twice as much in profit as the S&P 500 over that same period.
For priority access to Masterworks’ latest offerings, follow this link to skip the waiting list and invest in multimillion-dollar works of art”.
*Past performance is no guarantee of future results, and there are significant differences between investing in art and investing in stocks, bonds and other asset classes, see Masterworks’ important disclosures.
Sponsored Content created in collaboration with Masterworks.