The Super Bowl: Your Guide to Stock Picks?
N E W Y O R K, Feb. 1 -- The St. Louis Rams play the New England Patriots in the Super Bowl. The Bulls and Bears continue to battle on Wall Street. What's the connection?
Well, at least one person thinks the result of Super Bowl XXXVI could tell you all you need to know about the stock market for the rest of 2002.
That would be Professor Thomas Kreuger of the University of Wisconin-LaCrosse, co-author of a survey showing a strong correlation between the outcome of the Super Bowl and the direction of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the world's best-known stock index. Indeed, Kreuger lets the Super Bowl guide his investment strategy.
The indicator shows that when the winner comes from the National Football Conference (or is an AFC team from the pre-merger NFL, like the Steelers or Colts), the Dow Jones Industrial Average tends to rise during the year as a whole. To date, that has happened 22 of 25 times. But when the American Football Conference team wins, the Dow has fallen 7 of 10 years.
Accounts vary about who first noticed the correlation; Krueger first published his survey, along with Professor William Kennedy of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, in 1990.
All told, though, the game has forecast the Dow's direction 29 of 35 years, or 83 percent of the time. Kreuger says that an indicator like that, no matter how apparently whimsical, is too telling to ignore.
"The numbers don't lie," says Kreuger, a Green Bay Packers fan. "There must be some sort of relevance."
A win by the NFC's St. Louis, a heavy favorite, would seem to augur well for investors in 2002. But would Kreuger really venture into the markets based on the outcome of a football game?
"Let's assume the Rams win," says Kreuger. "I honestly have money sitting in cash accounts ready to invest on Monday."
Standing on the Sidelines
Kennedy, on the other hand, says that while he used to invest based on the Super Bowl, he no longer treats the correlation as a significant barometer.
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