It is about time for the art market to have its own derivatives trading market place. It will only make the market price discovery process more transparent and offer the institutional investors a way to hedge their investments. Hence, more and more institutional investors such as pension funds and insurance companies would feel safer regarding their fiduciary responsibility concerns to start treating artworks investment as a genuine asset class.
AopDex (Art Objects, Paintings & Derivatives Exchange) was created as the first tech venture that provides consumers with an online parallel derivative market to either invest in well-known artworks, to hedge existing art investments or simply to short an artist's over-priced valuation.
Everybody who has the minimum amount of money of a few thousand dollars to open an account will be able to express an opinion and take a long or short position of a well-known artist's artworks. The valuation of those high-priced artworks will for the first time be decided by a market which is composed of millions of small investors and billionaires alike, rather than simply by a small club of the latter.
The initial batch of contracts are 3, 5 and 10 year forward contracts on selected artists' artworks and art market indices. Among their many advantages, the one that is particularly of most interest to many art market professionals is the ability to sell short.
For more detailed information, please visit AopDex at http://aopdex.com.