Intrade the Prediction Market is pleased to announce an agreement with Beautiful Asset Advisors® LLC to create new binary futures markets for trading the global fine art market.
Intrade has listed on its prediction market platform a series of binary futures contracts based on Beautiful Asset Advisors' proprietary Mei Moses® All Art Index. The All Art Index measures the health of the fine art market by aggregating sale-over-sale auction prices of individual pieces.
The binary contracts allow the investor to take out a position on Index being above or below a certain value at settlement. For example, a position can be taken out that the Index will be valued at 230 or more at the end of 2009. The contract will then settle at $0.00 or $10.00 depending on whether or not the actual value of the Index is above or below 230.
Two markets have been listed: the mid-year tracking value of the Index which will be settled on July 7th 2009, and the end-of-year value which will be settled on January 7th 2010. These markets can be found under Intrade’s Art & Culture trading category.
Over the past ten years the Mei Moses All Art Index has shown higher annualized returns and lower volatility than the S&P 500. Art also outperformed bonds and bills during that time. The 2009 first quarter tracking report for the All Art Index showed a loss of about 35% compared to the 12% loss for the S&P500. The 2008 end-of-year settlement value of the Index was 267.1.
The Mei Moses All Art Index is created from a database of over 13,000 repeat sale pairs and uses a statistical methodology similar to that used in the creation of the S&P Case-Shiller U.S. residential real estate market index. The art index is calculated annually. It was first published in 2001 when its founders were professors at the Stern School of Business at New York University.
Analysts have estimated the global fine art market has annual sales of over $10 billion of which half is generated in the auction market and that fine art has a total capitalization exceeding $1 trillion.
Information on historic performance of the index and interim current year tracking results are available through Beautiful Asset Advisors' website at www.artasanasset.com.
For more information about Intrade contact help@intrade.com or call +353 1 4228402.
For more information about Beautiful Asset Advisors email support@artasanasset.com or call 212 998 0290.
