By Abby Schultz

It has been a dismal stretch for art collectors. But returns finally popped in the first quarter, with the mean compound annual return of art sold worldwide by auction houses Christie's, Phillips, and Sotheby's up 1.7%, from -0.01% in the fourth quarter and 0% a year ago, note ArtistIP.com co-founders Jianping Mei and Michael Moses in a recent paper.

They analyze works bought since 1970 and sold, sometimes repeatedly, since 2000. A positive return is good news, but they still found that 47% of sales in their repeat-sale universe had negative returns, and 25% didn't sell. British paintings with repeat sales posted the best mean return of 3.4%, followed by impressionist works with 3.1%.

The pair took aim at two art truisms: that works bought for high prices and owned for longer periods outperform. Instead, they found that returns for art under $1 million to be more unpredictable, like small stocks, with returns ranging from minus 80% to plus 200%, than works over $1 million, which went from minus 30% to plus 15%. Works sold less than five years after they were bought returned 7% on average, 3.5% within 10 years, and 1.4% within 20. But ones owned for 50 years scored 4.9%.

Moses recounts a sale of Martin Johnson Heade's Sun Gems (1863-65) for nearly $700,000, above the $180,000 house estimate. It had been acquired in 2018 for $210,000, for a 25% annualized return. "Clearly, there were two people in the house who really liked that painting," he says.

Write to Abby Schultz at abby.schultz@barrons.com

Last Week

Markets

Over the weekend, talks collapsed with Iran. The U.S. imposed a blockade of Iranian ports and said it would close the Strait of Hormuz. Oil prices topped $100 a barrel again. Stocks fell, then rallied on signs that talks were continuing. Earnings season began. The IMF cut global growth prospects for 2026 to 3.1%, lowest since the pandemic, but optimism over Iran talks drove the S&P 500 to a new high on Wednesday. Israel and Lebanon agreed to a 10-day truce, Hormuz opened, and stocks soared. On the week, the S&P was up 4.5%; the Nasdaq Composite; 6.8% -- both to new highs -- and the Dow industrials, 3.2%.

Companies

Goldman Sachs Group led off earnings with quarterly profit up 19%, but the stock fell on weak fixed-income, currencies, and commodities results. JPMorgan Chase posted record earnings, Bank of America and Morgan Stanley both beat. Beef processor JBS reached an agreement with the union behind a recent strike. Blue Owl Capital raised $400 million in a bond issue. OpenAI selectively released its cybersecurity model; Anthropic received funding offers at an $800 billion valuation. The Financial Times said Uber Technologies will spend $10 billion on robo-taxis. A federal jury found Ticketmaster parent Live Nation Entertainment acted as a monopoly.

Deals

Amazon.com agreed to buy Globalstar for $11.6 billion as it tries to compete with SpaceX's Starlink.

Milestone

Emerging market investing pioneer Mark Mobius died at 89.

Next Week

Tuesday 4/21

Roughly 90 S&P 500 index companies are set to report earnings this week, led by Capital One Financial, Danaher, GE Aerospace, RTX, and UnitedHealth Group on Tuesday. AT&T, Boeing, IBM, Lam Research, Philip Morris International, ServiceNow, Tesla, and Texas Instruments announce quarterly results on Wednesday, followed by American Express, Comcast, Honeywell International, Intel, Lockheed Martin, NextEra Energy, and Union Pacific on Thursday. HCA Healthcare, Norfolk Southern, and Procter & Gamble close out the week on Friday.

The Census Bureau reports retail and food services sales for March. Consensus estimate is for a 1.3% month-over-month increase, seven-tenths of a percentage point more than in February. Excluding autos and gas, retail sales are seen rising 0.2%, compared with 0.4% previously.

Thursday 4/23

S&P Global releases both its Manufacturing and Services Purchasing Managers' Indexes for April. Economists forecast a 52.5 reading for the Manufacturing PMI and a 50 for the Services PMI. This compares with readings of 52.3 and 49.8, respectively, in March. Readings above 50 indicate expansion compared with the prior month, while those below 50 represent contraction.

The Numbers

70

Number of supertankers heading to the U.S. Gulf Coast for oil, up from an average of 27 a month in 2025.

$130 B

Net inflows to BlackRock in the first quarter, the strongest start of the year in the company's history.

14%

Percentage of people who signed up for the Affordable Care Act this year who failed to pay the first premium.

70%

Percentage of U.S. farmers who said in a survey that they can't afford all needed fertilizer at current prices.

Write to Robert Teitelman at bob.teitelman@dowjones.com

This content was created by Barron's, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. Barron's is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

April 17, 2026 18:59 ET (22:59 GMT)

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