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Wall Street History
https://www.gofundme.com/s3h2w8
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12/21/2001
The Super Bowl and the Markets
Last week we took a look at the success of the Hula Hoop, this
week I''m going to get a jump on all those articles you''ll see
about the impact of football''s Super Bowl on the financial
markets. And there is a tie-in with another toy, the Super Ball.
In the early 1960s, a scientist by the name of Norman Stingley,
working for the Bettis Rubber Co. of Whittier, California, came
up with a compound which he called Zectron. Zectron''s main
property was that it had about six times the bounce of ordinary
rubber.
Well, the folks at Bettis saw no use for it, so they gave the rights
to Stingley, who then took his product to Wham-O company, the
same folks who made a fortune on the Hula Hoop and the
Frisbee. The Super Ball, as it was quickly labeled, was released
in 1965 and over the course of the decade some 20 million were
sold.
But what few folks may know is the fact that the Super Ball
ended up becoming the idea for the term "Super Bowl." The first
two contests between the NFL and the AFL were labeled the
"World Championship Game." After the second such contest,
the owners were sitting around trying to come up with a snappier
name when Lamar Hunt, the guiding light of the American
Football League, and the owner of the AFL''s Kansas City
Chiefs, remembered watching his daughter play with a high-
bouncing Super Ball a few days earlier and ''ball'' morphed into
''bowl.'' Voila.Super Bowl!
Of course many have had fun in coming up with explanations for
market behavior based on the results of the Super Bowl games,
the most common being that if a team from the old NFL won the
contest (including AFC entries like the Pittsburgh Steelers.a
former NFC team before the merger of the two leagues), then the
stock market would rise. But with Denver''s two victories in
1998 and 1999 (Denver being an old AFL club) and the success
of the market those two years, that theory has been put to bed.
So with this in mind, I hereby present the results of the games so
you can draw your own conclusions. I have included the S&P
500 return for the year, as well as the return on Intermediate U.S.
Government Bonds (5-yr.) and the inflation rate as measured by
the consumer price index. Nowhere else will you get all of this
information in one spot, sports and stock junkies.
Note: I included 1966 just to give you a sense of the
environment before the games started.
S&P 5-yr CPI
500 USG
1966 ----- No game ------------ -10.1 4.7 3.4
1967 Green Bay 35 Kansas City 10 24.0 1.1 3.0
1968 Green Bay 33 Oakland 14 11.1 4.5 4.7
1969 NY Jets 16 Baltimore 7 -8.5 -0.7 6.1
1970 Kansas City 23 Minn. 7 4.0 16.9 5.5
1971 Baltimore 16 Dallas 13 14.3 8.7 3.4
1972 Dallas 24 Miami 3 19.0 5.2 3.4
1973 Miami 14 Washington 7 -14.7 4.6 8.8
1974 Miami 24 Minnesota 7 -26.5 5.7 12.2
1975 Pittsburgh 16 Minnesota 6 37.2 7.8 7.0
1976 Pittsburgh 21 Dallas 17 23.8 12.9 4.8
1977 Oakland 32 Minnesota 14 -7.2 1.4 6.8
1978 Dallas 27 Denver 10 6.6 3.5 9.0
1979 Pittsburgh 35 Dallas 31 18.4 4.1 13.3
1980 Pittsburgh 31 L.A. Rams 19 32.4 3.9 12.4
1981 Oakland 27 Philadelphia 10 -4.9 9.5 8.9
1982 San Fran. 26 Cincinnati 21 21.4 29.1 3.9
1983 Washington 27 Miami 17 22.5 7.4 3.8
1984 L.A. Raiders 38 Wash. 9 6.3 14.0 4.0
1985 San Fran. 38 Miami 16 32.2 20.3 3.8
1986 Chicago 46 New Eng. 10 18.5 15.1 1.1
1987 NY Giants 39 Denver 20 5.2 2.9 4.4
1988 Washington 42 Denver 10 16.8 6.1 4.4
1989 San Fran. 20 Cincinnati 16 31.5 13.3 4.7
1990 San Fran. 55 Denver 10 -3.2 9.7 6.1
1991 NY Giants 20 Buffalo 19 30.6 15.5 3.1
1992 Washington 37 Buffalo 24 7.7 7.2 2.9
1993 Dallas 52 Buffalo 17 10.0 11.2 2.8
1994 Dallas 30 Buffalo 13 1.3 -5.1 2.7
1995 San Fran. 49 San Diego 26 37.4 16.8 2.5
1996 Dallas 27 Pittsburgh 17 23.1 2.1 3.3
1997 Green Bay 35 New Eng. 21 33.4 8.4 1.7
1998 Denver 31 Green Bay 24 28.6 10.2 1.6
1999 Denver 34 Atlanta 19 21.0 -1.8 2.7
2000 St. Louis 23 Tennessee 16 -9.1 12.6 3.4
2001 Baltimore 34 NY Giants 7 -11.9 8.2* 1.9*
*Lehman Int. Treas. Index, Nov.-Nov. CPI.
*Source for all financial data, Ibbotson Associates.
**Other source: "Toys!", Don Wulffson
Well, here are some of my own, unique conclusions. Not
including this year, which certainly would appear to be negative
on the equity side by the time we tally up the results in two
weeks.
--In the 7 down years for the S&P 500, 6 of those years the
margin of victory was less than 20 points. [Yeah, yeah, this will
be shattered in 2001.]
--In the 9 years when the margin of victory was greater than 20
points, an up market was the result in 8 of them.
--If Miami or Oakland wins, look out.the market finished down
all 4 years they won. [I''m not including 1984, when Oakland
was ''Los Angeles,'' and the market eked out a minimal gain.]
--If Pittsburgh wins.Ce-le-brate good times!
--And on a more financially oriented basis, you can see the
impact when the consumer price index is above 6%. With the
exception of 2000 (and 2001), all of the down years have
featured this level. True, there are exceptions, but it''s just a non-
football way to see how inflation can negatively impact the stock
market; with the competition for the investment dollar, the
damage to earnings as borrowing costs rise, impact on housing
market with higher mortgage rates, etc.
*Wall Street History will return January 5.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
Brian Trumbore
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