EXCLUSIVE: Kevin O'Leary Says The Watch Market Has Outperformed The S&P 500 For 8 Years Running — Here's Why He Wears 2 At A Time

"Shark Tank" investor Kevin O'Leary likes watches so much that he wore two of them at the Benzinga Fintech Deal Day & Awards.

"The watch market has actually beat the S&P now for the eighth year in a row," O'Leary said Monday at Benzinga's Fintech event in New York City.

Why Watches: The O'Shares ETFs chairman equated investing in watches to investing in modern art. The reason watches have gained so much value in recent years is the emergence of the Asian buyer, O'Leary said.

"The Chinese buyer particularly has decided that this asset class is a lot easier to work with in storage of wealth than many other asset classes," O'Leary said.

If you try to take a kilogram gold bar across international borders, you are likely to run into problems, but you can buy a watch that's worth more than a bar of gold and take it across pretty easily because it sits on your wrist, he said. 

"And so what's happened throughout all of the Asian markets is that's where all the demand has gone," O'Leary said. 

The Daytona Rolex used to be an entry-level watch for a college student, but now it's one of the most coveted watches on Earth because all of them go to Asia, he said. 

O'Leary told the crowd that he wears two watches at a time now because he owns so many watches and believes that if you don't wear a watch, it loses its soul. 

The watch market is booming around the world and demand in the UAE, in particular, has taken off. O'Leary used to believe he was the world's biggest watch collector before he met some of the collectors in the UAE, he said. 

The largest watch collector in the world lives in the UAE. He has 29,000 watches worth more than $1 billion, O'Leary said: "That's a watch collection."

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Photo: Anthony Pompliano and Kevin O'Leary (right) at Benzinga Fintech Deal Day, photo Puratya Jankong