Watch Market Indicators

Subdial Index

The Subdial Index (often referred to as the “Bloomberg Subdial Watch Index”) is a benchmark that tracks the performance of the secondary market for luxury wrist-watches. It is available via the Subdial market page at https://subdial.com/market.

What it is:
It represents a portfolio of around 50 watch references which have the highest traded value in the prior 12 months.
These are mostly models from top brands such as Rolex, Patek Philippe and Audemars Piguet.

What it’s for:
The Index gives collectors, investors and market watchers a snapshot of how values in the pre-owned luxury watch sector are evolving — in effect adding a quasi-stock-index layer to blue-chip watches. It is used for assessing sentiment, timing entry/exit and tracking market cycles in the secondary watch market.

How it is calculated:

  • The basket is selected by traded value rather than simply high retail price: the model must have substantial volume of transactions.
  • For each included reference, the calculation takes into account the price and volume of trades in the prior 12 months.
  • The index is published in two currencies (USD and GBP) to account for FX effects.
  • Data is smoothed/averaged to reduce one-off anomalies: e.g., extremely high/low listings are filtered out, low-liquidity models excluded.

 

Chrono24 ChronoPulse Index

The ChronoPulse Index is a price‐indicator provided by the watch marketplace Chrono24, available at https://www.chrono24.com/chronopulse.htm.

What it is:
ChronoPulse is a dynamic index tracking the global secondary market for luxury watches. It covers 14 major brands and around 140 individual models, based on over 600,000 transactions.

What it’s for:
It offers investors, collectors and market observers a daily-updated measure of watch price trends — similar to how equity indices work for stocks. It helps assess whether the market is generally bullish or bearish, and how specific brands or models are performing relative to the broader market.

How it is calculated:

  • Starting from 1 January 2019, the index begins at a fixed value of 1,000 points.
  • It then tracks the price movement (based on real-sales data) of the selected basket of watches, across the 14 brands / ~140 models.
  • Changes in points therefore reflect percentage changes in the aggregate price level of that basket, rather than quoting average watch prices.