Quote:
Originally Posted by Hankphenom
I could never understand, from the start of the catalog auction era 30 years ago, until now, why December seems to be the one month in which ALL the big AHs choose to stage one of their two or three major auctions a year, some of them within a week or two of Xmas. But these guys know their business, so there must be something going on there or they wouldn't keep doing it. Year end bonuses, dividends, stock sales to lock in capital gains losses to take against gains, tax refunds looming, etc? There must be enough cash floating around at this time to make it worth their while to compete with Christmas spending, which normally wouldn't seem to be the smartest thing to do.
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I've done a lot of predictive modeling in other markets that account for seasonality, and it doesn't really have much of an effect on higher net worth individuals. It's primarily a financial pressure on the middle and lower classes with respect to spending habits. I suspect this is why they still run their larger auctions because they really only care about the big ticket items anyhow, and those hammer prices aren't really going to be affected by seasonality.
That said, other factors like interest rates, political and social unrest, and conflicts abroad all certainly do have measurable effects across all income levels.