I Love Art

I mentioned a week or so ago that I bought Sotheby's (BID). I bought them a day or two too early at $27. They then reported earnings and dropped as low as $24 as people were unhappy that they lost money in the quarter, even though BID said their business is very seasonal and the first quarter had lost money 18 of past 20 quarters.

Well, they caught fire after dipping briefly below $24 and over the past two days jumped to $28.76 as both Christie's and Sotheby's had extremely successful art sales, showing the rich are still rich (Sotheby's shares jump as Bacon artwork sells for record price). Remember, the stock price is depressed from a high of $61 becasue people feared the financial problems in the US would put a damper on auctions. But demand for these pieces of art is truly worldwide.

I did get less than positive earnings from WH today (WSP Holdings Reports First Quarter 2008 Results). They weren't all that bad, but apparantly people were expecting something really great as the stock had been bid up a lot recently.

Finally, ELOS had respectable earnings (Syneron Reports First Quarter 2008 Revenues of $34.1 Million and Net Profit of $8.3 Million) on Wednesday and they have risen about 10% since then and are in the black (finally) for me. This was the stock I bought as Seth Klarman had been buying them hand over fist.