With the watches-auction-season right in front of us, it may be time to put down what we expect: We have written earlier, steady and more than 30 months ago already, that we are quite sure prices for tangible assets would rise and watches were not excluded and we expect they will do so even further. There will be new record prices this year again here and there simply because people are in search of rare / unique items to store value outside of the fragile financial system with all its policy-failures and -flaws created in the last 20y -- besides the fact that money loses the attribute of scarcity, as the year long bureaucrat-created QE programs in general, and the latest twist of the Bank of England especially showed. So, we will see even higher prices and strong auction results, quite sure and probably rising prices throughout every other part of the economy in producer and consumer prices alike, ie. inflation accelerating further after central-bank policy returning officially to the QEs.

By the way, since every man and his dog is quite sure about a recession, we should prepare to think the opposite. A boom like no other (fueled by further cheap money?)? Seriously: The Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Ms Kristalina Georgieva lately announced the "coming recession" as almost any other politician and bureaucrat. But dont forget, the Miss Georgieva of the IMF learned her skills at the deep red Socialist / Communist Kaderschmiede Karl Marx Higher Institute of Economics in Sofia Bulgaria until she was almost 40 years old and one can have some doubts about the economic understanding (and the predictive power) of such comrades. Although, now they are well seated and at the helm of such institutions...

Outlook: In the next days, we will present our Top5 and Flop5 of the upcoming watches-auctions -- and to the surprise: in our view top of the tops is a Rolex and our flop a Patek Philippe.