The Artisanal Spirits Share Discussion Threads

[gussher] 12/1/2017 02:46

Yea, good question andywg ... what is the plan ?
Is AHRT a viable new technology discovery company ...? or is it just a vehicle for autograph hunters collecting a load of celebrity names and calling them " Advisors to the Board" ?
After all this time .. is there an actual AHRT end product ever going to market ?
Or is this just a sham company with loads of 'big' names ... trading and earning revenue elsewhere under a parent company ?
Answers on a postage stamp please ...

[gussher] 09/12/2016 05:33

Looks like ARHT have some heavyweight competition being lined up.... or should that read " Munster " competition .. ?

[praipus] 16/11/2016 16:10

Original Myles Birkett Foster for sale....

[praipus] 04/11/2016 10:52

Original sketch by Sir Stanley Spencer RA (1891-1959) anyone ?


Christ Preaching at Cookham Regatta: Conversion Between Punts went for £6,018,500 ...via Christies 20 November 2013

[hazl] 12/6/2016 18:56

Interesting grumpyoldmen.
I like Modigliani's work so much.
A favourite website of mine ....

[the grumpy old men] 12/6/2016 12:24

The art market turns ugly
By: Simon Wilson
12/06/2016
0 comments
Picasso’s Les Femmes d’Alger © Alamy
Picasso’s Les Femmes d’Alger fetched $179.4m

Art has been a popular and successful investment since the 2008 crisis – but now there are jitters in the market, and not just over the bubbly prices. Simon Wilson reports.
Has the art market peaked?

Probably. Since the 2008-2009 financial crisis, investing in art has proved a winner – particularly contemporary art, which has doubled in value. Specific segments of the market have boomed beyond all rational explanation and are well into speculative bubble territory. For example, the emerging genre of “zombie formalism” – art that is essentially just shinily attractive and lacking in any representational or narrative content, and is thus perfect for trading as an asset class – saw prices shoot up wildly before deflating last year.

We also saw some record auction prices being achieved ($179.4m for Picasso’s Les Femmes d’Alger; $170.4m for Modigliani’s Nu couché), as well as even higher reported prices for (harder to verify) private sales – including a Gauguin and a Willem de Kooning for $300m each, and a Jackson Pollock for $200m. Yet overall in 2015 the art market shrank.
How much has it fallen by?

According to the most widely cited survey of the global art market, an annual report by The European Fine Art Fair (TEFAF), the global market contracted by 7% in 2015, with worldwide sales of $63.8bn. That’s 7% lower than the record high of $68.2bn achieved in 2014. The figures are compiled for TEFAF by art economist Dr Clare McAndrew, and include auction sales (for which figures are relatively easy to obtain) and sales by dealers (which are self-reported, and therefore less reliable).

The main source of continuing strength in the market is America, which accounted for 43% of total sales (up four percentage points on 2014). The next-biggest markets are the UK (21%) and China (19%), but both shrank in 2015. China saw a serious slump of 23% on McAndrew’s figures, while the UK market fell by 9%.
And this year?

The downward trend seems to be continuing. The big London sales in February saw markedly less bullish trading volumes and prices. And last month, in the most hectic trading week of the art market year, Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Phillips in New York sold $1.1bn worth of Impressionist, Modern and Contemporary art. That might sound a lot, but the equivalent total last year was $2.7bn.

The nervousness in the market is being driven, say analysts, not just by jitters over the direction of the global economy – and in particular the collapse of confidence in Brazil and China – but by the growing sense that, more than ever, the opacity of the art market makes it a legalised form of insider trading, where nothing is quite what it seems.
Is there insider trading in art?

Take the role played by auction houses. Are they merely disinterested market makers facilitating the coming together of sellers and buyers? Or are they market participants – in effect dealers, who use perfectly legal but decidedly opaque tactics to maximise revenues and profits on the paintings they are dealing in?

The surge in the number of works being sold in which auction houses have a financial interest, and the use of third-party “guarantees221; to sellers, means that increasingly art market analysts see them as the latter. In order to attract custom at the high end of the market, auction houses – including the big two, Christie’s and Sotheby’s – increasingly pre-accept “guaranteed221; minimum bids from anonymous collectors or dealers.
How does that work?

Guarantors undertake to a pay an agreed base price, but may also then participate in the public auction, and – under a byzantine fee structure – take a slice of the profit if they don’t end up as the buyer. To complicate things, the auction houses also lay off some of the risk on the most valuable works to dealers or collectors, who put up their capital in return for a fee.

All this means that it’s possible, for a sophisticated collector, to get a decent return simply by acting as a guarantor, and relatively easy artificially to prop up the market in a particular artist (and even get a fee for doing so).
Why does all this matter?

Clearly, it doesn’t much matter to anyone if a billionaire is overcharged a few million for a luxury object whose value depends solely on what someone is willing to pay. That’s the accusation levelled by Russian oligarch Dmitry Ryboloblev against Swiss dealer Yves Bouvier in a notorious long-running legal case, involving claims that Bouvier charged Ryboloblev hundreds of millions pounds more than he paid for 40 major works (Ryboloblev says he thought Bouvier was his agent, charging a 2% commission; Bouvier says he was merely a dealer).

And, of course, art auctions have always been partly about smoke and mirrors, notorious for “chandelier bidding” (imaginary bids) and the like. But what does matter is that the opacity of the system – the fact that even at a public auction the published price is not the price actually paid. This makes the entire market vulnerable to price gouging, ramping and outright fraud – and potentially even money laundering and tax evasion.
Is art a sound investment?

Art is often described as a useful means of diversifying an investment portfolio. In reality, like many other supposedly “uncorrelated” asset classes, it did not live up to that billing during the financial crisis of 2008 and the stockmarket crash of the late 2000s – prices still fell.

Moreover, transaction costs are high, at up to 4%, making art a notably expensive (and illiquid) asset to trade. What art has going for it is that it is tangible, easily moveable, and easily storable in modern “free port” warehouses – all attractive qualities for people rich enough to worry about mitigating their tax liabilities in different jurisdictions. But nowhere is the old warning “caveat emptor” more apt. As the artist and critic Walter Robinson – coiner of the phrase “zombie formalism” – puts it: “Since the entire market is entirely irrational, it can’t be rationally interpreted.”

[andywg] 26/2/2016 14:00

All very well, ARHT, but please, when do we actually have a product, and start generating revenue!? We cant just keep issuing more shares/dilution. What is the plan!?

Financing
NetDragon will participate in a non-brokered private placement of 19,278,104 common shares of the Company (the “Shares”) at a purchase price of $0.25 per Share, to raise gross proceeds of CDN$4,819,526 (the "Offering"). The Shares issued on closing of the Offering will all be subject to a four month statutory hold period commencing on the date of issuance. The proceeds from the Offering will be used for general working capital purposes. The Offering is subject to certain conditions including receipt of all necessary regulatory approvals and the approval of the TSX Venture Exchange.

[ucasavi] 29/12/2015 13:45

In a nutshell I guess
hxxp://www.digitaltrends.com/home-theater/humagrams-are-interactive-holograms-you-can-talk-to/

Before you start thinking of using the technology yourself to create your own virtual buddy, ARHT is focusing on building applications for various commercial markets, and isn’t planning anything for consumers in the near future. Right now, the tech is too expensive to be practical for home use, but ultimately, that will change.

“Once it’s at a price point consumers can afford, that’s a breakthrough on bringing this level of realism into the house.”

You can best break down ARHT Media’s tech in terms of cost per lumen. The projectors needed to pull off this kind of display are pricey — so pricey that you can break down cost in terms of how many dollars it takes to generate one lumen for this project. Despite that, the company forecasts significant price drops for projection technologies by around 2017-18, and that’s encouraging for the prospect of bringing the tech to the consumer level.

“This is our observation of the projection industry at large. We continue to see projectors with higher lumens available for less and less money, mainly due to many improvements in the technology and an increase in demand for their uses,” says Salman Amin, marketing and sales at ARHT Media. “For example. projectors and various applications for 3D mapping are being seen much more in entertainment, speaking and advertising to name a few.”

Amin adds that the projection systems ARHT uses are of a “much higher caliber” than what even the most sophisticated home theater system would use, so the company’s displays aren’t likely to be seen anytime soon in the home theater industry.

Still, spurred demand may alter that. Skype brought 2D video chatting to the mainstream, and the concept of holoporting 3D family members living far away from each other may be seen as expansion of that paradigm. If the technology becomes scalable enough to be made possible in the living room, it may be fair to assume that consumers will be next, regardless of whether it’s ARHT pulling the trigger or not.

“Once it’s at a price point consumers can afford, that’s a breakthrough on bringing this level of realism into the house,” says Duffy. “How our proximity-based technologies capture, find and render you, it’s not a stretch to assume that you would basically be holoporting back and forth.”

[gussher] 24/12/2015 22:57

Where is ARHT today ?
Where has all the hype gone ?
What is going on ?
Is this company still alive & kicking ?
... Or is it dead and buried ? ...

Last info or news I can find is ....
(1) circa June or August 2015 when CNBC did a schmaltsy self-adoring blurb ...
(2) and circa August 2015 when company announced a Private placing of shares ...

Since then ...not a whisper...nothing-zilch-total blackout of information.
Have I missed something ? .. has the company secretly folded-up and gone to the dogs ? ... taking my miserly 35 shares down with it ?....haha

Or ..... are all the big-shot Hollywood names still aboard ?
Is this company still breathing ...
Seriously, I cannot understand why there have been no updates, nor news of any developments over the last several months.

If all their hype about their new "Hologram-Tecnology" creation was so credible... surely it must be a simple matter to force it agressivly on to the World techno-market .. ?
From their blurbs back in June and August 2015, I thought the basic technology was captured ...and it was just a matter of marketing the product. and no apparant reason why that should take much time
Apparantly not ... there has not been as much as a murmur from AHRT, nor the techno-Media, nor the Stock Market to suggest that AHRT is anything other than a dead duck ..possibly had its neck choked by the big boys on the school playground ? - Google, for example ..?
AHRT ... is it dead ...? ..or is it alive ... ?
Gussher

[gussher] 28/8/2015 02:00

Whats up .. ? ... share price spiked up to 40c today at approx 2.30pm.. then quickly dropped back down to square one 32c. Todays trading volume was 343k shares, as opposed to a 3-month daily average of 84k
What's up .... ?
Anyone got any sniff of what's going on behind the curtains ?

[hazl] 18/7/2015 16:06

an alternative investment?

[andywg] 21/6/2015 17:37

Ive been promoting the tech to a few AV co's who specialise in both education tech installations and conference support etc. I can see a VERY BIG market for this tech in the education AV market. Video conferencing and lecture overflow would benefit from this tech also.

[roily] 21/6/2015 13:11

I saw it last night, it looks pretty good.

I find it interesting that I was an E&P investor losing money in Kurdistan and by default I'm transitioning into a tech investor with ART and now UR.

[roily] 21/6/2015 13:11

I saw it last night, it looks pretty good.

I find it interesting that I was an E&P investor losing money in Kurdistan and by default I'm transitioning into a tech investor with ART and now UR.

[pheadrus] 21/6/2015 08:56

This first video is just 1 min - it shot closer so you can see how real hologram feels-

[roily] 20/6/2015 15:56

The Tony Robins event should have happened, waiting to see the reviews.

Interesting how VST turned into ART and LFD turned into UR. Big news coming from UR and it has a lot of legs.

hxxp://web.tmxmoney.com/quote.php?locale=en&qm_symbol=UR

[roily] 16/6/2015 14:56

Good see this getting some TV play.

[gussher] 07/6/2015 19:03

And yet another ARHT partnership / connection ...

[muddy_40] 06/6/2015 17:06

Thanks for the link, certainly sounds interesting. will be good to see how successful this event is.

[roily] 06/6/2015 16:27

I forgot what needs to be done with links when posting, but I'm sure you can deal with it.