Art Investing as a Full-Time Income?
Investment in anything can be a lucrative business or a great way to burn the family nest egg. So, what if you have an eye for great art and a passion for investing? Surely you can simply combine the two and be a billionaire by next week, right? If only it were that easy! Art investing is a tricky business, and there are many ways to be successful or fail miserably if you don't know what you're doing.
Any type of investment can be risky, especially art investing. Great risk often brings great reward, but it is important to remember that nothing would be risky if there were not a high likelihood of loss. That being said, if you do decide to give full time art investing a try, it is best to start with a positive outlook and researching as much about it as possible. Art investing is an opportunity to make a lot of money and help preserve the world's great pieces at the same time.
The market of art investing has its ups, downs and trends just as the financial stock market does. There will be times that you won't be able to move any of the works you've invested most of your capital into. Other times you will find everything you own has gone up in value and you have your pick of investors. Simply put the idea of art investing is to buy when the price is low and sell when it is high, just like the stock market. That is a very basic principle; the rest is decidedly more complicated.
If you are serious about making your living in art investing, you must educate yourself on the topic. You need to familiarize yourself with the different mediums and sources of art that are available. You may have personal favorites, but it will often be necessary in your art investing to disregard your own preferences. To those serious about art investing, personal opinions should take a back seat to the more popular trends of the moment.
Art investing as a beginner, you may not be prepared to invest every penny you have into one piece that may or may not go up in value. It is a great risk and could ruin you financially just as quickly as it could set you up for life. Another possibility for earning potential in is a mutual fund or trust that focuses on art investing. Just like standard mutual funds, these are pools of people who invest money together to purchase.
There are great advantages to this method of art investing. The pieces that can be purchased by a group are often much more valuable than what you could afford on your own. Additionally, the participants share the profits and the losses. If a particular investment turns out to be a bad one, you won't take as big of a hit as you would if you were the sole investor. These particular groups are uncommon and are often not as successful as their financial counterparts, but the right one could prove very lucrative.
Just as with any kind of full time investing, art investing can make you a great fortune or leave you penniless. Unfortunately no one can predict what the market will do, though many try daily. If you choose art investing as your career, it is a good idea to keep a backup income source for those months or years that your portfolio simply isn't selling. It may take a little time and effort before your see results, but with the right research, education and smart decisions, you have the potential to make a nice living in art investing.
