Sothebys stock slips

Sotheby's stock dropped to $25.74, down 18 percent in the last 90 days, although still almost twice what it was last year at this time. Although sales at this year’s big summer auctions at Sotheby’s and Christie’s tripled last year’s sales, expectations were very high. Securities analyst Rommel Dionisio said he “hates "to call being up 300 percent a disappointment,” and these pricetags are prohibitively high for all but a dozen or so bidders. “When a couple billionaires wake up on the wrong side of the bed that day, the paintings are not going to sell," he said. "I hate to draw broad conclusions over the whole art market on virtue of a couple paintings that didn't sell. We have to look back over a several-week trend, which frankly is very strong."