So do you want the Seattle Seahawks to win, or are you rooting for the New England Patriots? There are a few ways to look at the potential winner.
If you're a stock-market investor, you might want to root for the Seahawks. In 39 of the previous 48 Super Bowl games(81%), the winner has been a reliable predictor of the following year's stock market performance. If the NFC wins, the following year will produce a bullish market. So says Robert Stovall, National Investment Services, who, for decades, has been tracking the Super Bowl results as a predictor of the performance of the stock market in the following year.
Not convinced? Nancy Tengler, author of The Women's Guide to Successful Investing, financial commentator, and university professor also offers another possibility. According to Wall Street lore, if the Sports Illustrated Cover Model is American, stocks will have a great year, with the average return from 1979 through 2008 coinciding with an American model on the cover of 13.9 %. Not sure what that might have to do with the Super Bowl, but Tom Brady's wife is a super model.
Others interested in the state of the economy correlate the unemployment rate in each team's city with the likelihood of a win or loss for that team. In November of 2014, the unemployment rate in Seattle was 4.2 while the rate for same month in Boston was 5.2 (Bureau of Labor Statistics). Oh, oh! Based on this correlation, Seattle still looks good.
We might look on all of these correlations as suspect since 'correlation does not equal causality', but it does give those of us interested in the stock market and the economic indicators another reason to watch the game.
(All predictors have been reported in Nancy Tengler's article, "Seahawks Win Would Benefit Stock Market, Predictor Says," Arizona Republic, January 28, 2015, A14.)
No comments:
Post a Comment