Alternative Investing Report - November 25, 2024

*as of 11/24; Sources: S&P, BTC, FTSE, DJRE, CL50

The New York fall art auctions at Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Phillips got a lot of hype, particularly for the $121 million Magritte and the $6.2 million duct-taped banana. Overall, though, the $1.3 billion in total sales represent a 40% decline from last year’s total and came in at the low end of pre-auction estimates.

➨ TAKEAWAY: The week wasn’t a rousing success or a disappointing failure - it merely met expectations. There were plenty of records set for individual artists and marquee sales, but the art market is not roaring back post-election, as some had hoped. It is still recovering from its post-pandemic slumber, which should continue into 2025.

AI enterprise spending has grown to $13.8 billion this year, a six-fold increase compared to the $2.3 billion spent in 2023. A survey of 600 IT decision-makers found that 72% expect to up their spending further in the near future. The most valuable use cases for AI so far have come with coding co-pilots, support chatbots, and enterprise search and data extraction.

➨ TAKEAWAY: While AI gets the most attention in the mainstream for its writing, image and video capabilities, it is in relatively less exciting fields that it has shown the most utility. This exponential growth in spending is part of what is driving the rising values of AI startups and massive funding rounds, like Amazon’s latest $4 billion investment into Anthropic.

Interested in investing in private companies? Join us on Tuesday, December 3 at 11 AM ET to learn all about OpenAI, the American AI giant. Vincent CEO Eric Cantor and Jan-Erik Asplund, Pre-IPO analyst at Sacra, will dig into the company’s growth, strengths, challenges, IPO prospects, and answer investor questions.

📰 Treasury Secretary pick: Billionaire hedge fund manager Scott Bessent has been tapped to be the next Treasury Secretary, and his stance on deregulation could bode well for the alternative investing space.

🚀 Defense tech funding: Startups in the military, national security and law enforcement sectors have raised $3 billion so far in 2024, the highest amount ever for the industry in a single year.

🏡 Existing-home sales grow: Due partially to the brief dip in mortgage rates, existing-home sales rose by 3.4% in October and were up 2.9% year-over-year, which is the first yearly increase since 2021.

⚾ Ruth card sale: A rare and highly-graded 1933 Goudey Babe Ruth card sold for a record $1.62 million, just above the pre-sale low estimate of $1.5 million.

🏢 CRE activity dips: Commercial real estate deal count nationally hit its lowest level since 2011, with the lowest dollar volume since 2013, though the volume for office properties actually rose by 4.4% year-over-year, perhaps signaling that the market is nearing its bottom.

🪙 Altcoins surge: Over the weekend, some of the lesser-known top-20 crypto tokens, such as Ripple (XRP), Cardano (ADA) and Stellar Lumens (XLM) saw big gains, partially because some investors likely took Bitcoin gains and diversified their portfolio.

Tuesday: September Case-Shiller Home Price Index and FHFA House Price Index released.

Wednesday: Core PCE inflation index released.

Thursday: Thanksgiving! Family, Friends, Food and Football.

Friday: Black Friday - the holiday retail season begins.

Sunday: RM Sotheby’s Dubai auction, featuring 8 modern seven-figure cars, including a 2014 Pagani Zonda LM 760 Roadster estimated to sell for over $12 million.