When it comes to dollars and investing sense, Wall Street likely will be rooting for the defensive-minded Seattle Seahawks to beat passer extraordinaire Peyton Manning and the Denver Broncos in Super Bowl XLVIII.
It’s not that stock investors think that Seahawks-ranting cornerback Richard Sherman’s verbal pronouncements have more market-moving power than future comments from incoming Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen. Or that a win for the hot Seahawks will result in a sudden burst of spending by consumers or provide a jolt of confidence to corporate CEOs.
The reason Wall Street favors the Seahawks is because of a quirky stock market indicator, known as the “Super Bowl indicator.” This theory basically says the stock market will post a gain for the year if a team from the National Football Conference, or a team that originally was in the NFC, beats its rival from the American Football Conference.
The Seahawks are an NFC team, and the Broncos hail from the AFC.
While this stock market indicator seems wacky and off the wall, it works.
It has been correct 37 of the last 47 years, for a 78.7 percent success rate, said Howard Silverblatt, senior index analyst at S&P Dow Jones Indices.
“It is a totally irrelevant and irrational indicator, but it works,” he said.
It’s worked four of the last five years, including last year when the Baltimore Ravens (which the “Super Bowl indicator” considers an original NFL franchise as they were born after the NFC Cleveland Browns moved to Baltimore back in 1996 to the AFC) beat the San Francisco 49ers, and the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index rose 29.6 percent for the year.
But beware. There was a big, big miss in 2008. Despite the NFC New York Giants edging out Tom Brady’s New England Patriots to win Super Bowl XLII, the stock market plunged 38.5 percent.
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