Player shows the Closing Price feed. Open the episode for this date on your platform of choice.
Your evening read on the luxury and collectibles markets, by the numbers. Tonight: a broad pullback. After a run of records, luxury stocks fell on both sides of the Atlantic, the Dow and S&P slipped, and even gold retreated — all ahead of the Fed's first decision under Kevin Warsh. The one market that didn't flinch: the auction room.
(Prices: Yahoo Finance v8, all closes final after the 4 PM ET bell, June 17; prior = June 16 close.)
Good evening. It's Wednesday, June 17. I'm Sharon, and this is Closing Price from ALT/FNDATA.
After a run of record highs, the markets pulled back today. Luxury shares fell on both sides of the Atlantic, the Dow and the S&P 500 slipped from yesterday's records, gold ended a two-day record streak, and oil dropped to a fresh three-month low. Here are the numbers, and what they say about the gap between luxury stocks and the collectibles those companies are known for.
Start with the luxury names, where the selling was nearly uniform. In Europe, every major house closed lower. Burberry, ticker BRBY in London, led the declines, closing at 1,127.5 pence, down about 2.6 percent. LVMH, ticker MC in Paris, closed at 511 euros, down about 1.8 percent. Hermès, ticker RMS, finished at 1,727.5 euros, down about 1.3 percent. Watches of Switzerland fell about 1.5 percent, while Richemont, Kering, and Swatch closed only marginally lower.
In New York, the declines were steeper. Capri Holdings, the parent of Versace, ticker CPRI, was the weakest name on the board, closing at 19.73 dollars, down about 5 percent. Zegna, ticker ZGN, fell about 4 percent, to 13.91 dollars. Ferrari, ticker RACE, dropped about 3.2 percent, to 354.28 dollars. Tapestry, the owner of Coach, fell about 2.4 percent, and Signet about 1.8 percent.
The one exception was Movado, ticker MOV, which rose about 0.4 percent, to 37.24 dollars. Movado makes mid-priced fashion watches under its own name and under licenses including Coach, Tommy Hilfiger, and Hugo Boss. That is the segment of the watch market most eroded by smartwatches, and it draws no benefit from the record prices being paid for collectible Swiss watches at auction.
Gold reversed after two consecutive record closes, falling about 1.3 percent to around 4,276 dollars an ounce. Silver fell harder, down about 2.8 percent to about 68 dollars. Gold usually rises when stocks fall, so a decline in both on the same day points to broad profit-taking after the recent rally, rather than a move out of stocks and into safety. Oil fell again as well, down about 1.4 percent to around 75 dollars a barrel, a three-month low.
Against all of that, the auction market did not move. Across watches and jewelry in the ALT/FNDATA database, 26 individual lots have each sold for more than a million dollars in just the past 90 days, 19 of them in jewelry and 7 in watches. The point is a simple one. Buying shares in a luxury company is not the same as owning the rare object itself, and the two do not always move together. A fall in a luxury company's share price does not lower the price of a trophy diamond.
The broader market was lower as well. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell about 1 percent, to around 51,500, slipping from yesterday's record close, and the S&P 500 lost about 1.2 percent, to around 7,420, led lower by the technology sector. The move comes ahead of the Federal Reserve's first interest-rate decision under its new chair, Kevin Warsh, due later this week, and follows the sharp rally that the US-Iran agreement set off.
In sum: luxury stocks lower on both continents, gold down about 1.3 percent and silver down about 2.8 percent, and the Dow and S&P 500 each off about 1 percent, all ahead of this week's Federal Reserve decision.
Looking ahead, the RM Sotheby's Sealed auction, featuring a 1969 Lamborghini Miura, closed today, and the market's attention now turns to the Fed.
That's it on Closing Price for today, Wednesday, June 17. Open Bid returns tomorrow morning at 6 AM Eastern, and our weekly Auto Market show also publishes tomorrow.
For more insight on the stories behind today's Closing Price, explore the ALT/FNDATA market index and datasets, which track the secondary-market signals beneath the luxury names we follow. You can start for free in our data sandbox. To get started, reach us on our website, or by email at info@altfndata.com.
Subscribe to be notified of new episodes, and if you enjoy the show, please leave us a five-star rating on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
I'm Sharon, from ALT/FNDATA. I'll talk with you in the next episode.
