Super "bull" market

My nephew recently posted a question of sorts on my Facebook wall, wondering if there was some sort of connection between the frightening drop in the stock market during the last week of January 2010 and the New York Jets being bounced from the NFL playoffs on the Sunday preceding the week long swoon in equities. I figured he was being a bit facetious, because the only reason he would pay any attention to a sporting event would be if it involved comic book super heroes. I still haven't asked what exactly he meant, my guess was he was "suggesting" - due to the fact that Wall Street is located in New York City (actually, the Jets' home field is in East Rutherford, New Jersey) - depressed investors dragged down stock prices in their despair over the outcome of the AFC championship game.

The Jets failure to reach Super Bowl XLIV aside, more likely the stock markets brief losing streak was the result of a combination of things. Not necessarily in order of importance, but, suddenly a pro-populist, we had President Obama's recent big bank-bashing which bashed bank stocks pulling down prices in general. Additionally, considering the fact that the Dow was up 60 percent from March of last year, perhaps we were due for a "correction." Then there was the uncertainty created by the sudden rise in opposition to Ben Bernanke's reconfirmation for a second term as Fed chief, which included our own Barbara "Don't call me Ma'am" Boxer, and her sudden about-face that not coincidentally came on the heels of the stunning upset in Massachusetts where a Republican took over the late Ted Kennedy's Senate seat in an election Dems were so confident they had in the bag they probably figured they'd win by running a block of wood as their candidate against the young exhibitionist upstart.

Ironically, though, in a way my nephew had, perhaps unwittingly, stumbled upon something. That is, is there any sort of connection or correlation between the outcome of the Super Bowl and stock market performance of the same year? Actually, if history is a guide, stocks should have rallied following the Indianapolis Colts victory over the Jets. You see, over the last XLIII years the Super Bowl has been played, typically stocks go up when a team from the old NFL wins, but tank when a team with its roots in the AFL wins. How accurate is this indicator? Just 81 percent of the time, that's all! Hence, given that the Jets who began in the AFL are now out of the picture, and the two remaining teams, the Colts and the New Orleans Saints come from the old NFL, it looks like a win-win for stocks in 2010.

Keep in mind, if you are about to run to your bedroom and pull the wad of cash currently stuffed in your mattress to go "all in" on stocks based on the above statistic, you would be committing a logical error known as the post hoc fallacy (in full, post hoc, ergo propter hoc, e.g. because B followed A, A necessarily caused B). Then again, a professional portfolio manager with such a track record would be a media superstar.

For what it's worth I picked the Colts (AFC) in this year's tilt. But I am beginning to reconsider because according to an article in The Wall Street Journal, when the average age of the featured halftime-show performers is over 47 (XLVII), the team from the NFC wins almost two-thirds of the time. For this year's act, The Who (what's left of them anyway), the average age is 64.5. Whatever the outcome, let's just hope there are no "wardrobe malfunctions." Enjoy the commercials.