Add Racehorses to the List of Financial Assets That Are Sinking

(Bloomberg) -- Stocks, corporate bonds, oil, silver. And now racehorses, too.

The month-long wipeout in financial asset prices extended into the thoroughbred world Tuesday, when the Ocala Breeders’ Sales Company began its traditional two-day auction of young horses in Ocala, Florida.

By essentially every major metric, sales figures were way down from a year ago. The highest price of the day came in at $650,000, a drop of 68% from the $2 million that was doled out on a two-year-old colt last year. The average price on the day fell 35% to $93,660. And the total amount spent on the first day of the auction dropped 45% to under $13 million.

Like sports cars, yachts and fine art, thoroughbreds are expensive toys for the world’s one-percenters, and the plunge in auction prices underscores how the coronavirus outbreak -- and the sudden, sharp economic decline it’s fueled -- are prompting even that elite crowd to quickly rein in discretionary spending. Demand was so weak at the auction that many sellers opted to pull their horses out.

The thoroughbred industry, like most businesses across the U.S., has been hit hard by the virus. Other auction houses canceled their early-season sales; racetracks are either running their races without fans or shutting down entirely; and the Kentucky Derby, traditionally set on the first Saturday in May, was postponed to September.

Day two of the Ocala sale begins at 10:30 a.m. local time.

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