World Cup goals won’t help stocks score gains
Market tends to fall a bit during big soccer game
All those big goals celebrated on the pitch during the World Cup probably won’t help your stock portfolio score gains.
Investors aren’t big winners when the soccer-crazed globe is tuned into every bicycle kick, 50-50 ball and red card during the big soccer tournament, historical performance data show.
From the first match to the final game in the 20 World Cups since 1930, the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index has posted an average loss of 1.01 percent, Bespoke Investment Group data show.
“Investors should probably keep their eyes on the pitch rather than the market if they’re looking for joy,” quipped Paul Hickey, co-founder of Bespoke.
The stock market’s subpar performance when the world’s biggest soccer tournament is going on could also be a function of stock traders being more interested in the dazzling ballhandling skills of Argentina’s Lionel Messi and Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo than the dizzying gyrations of the Dow.
“It’s the ‘beautiful game’ – better to watch the ball than the screen,” said Joe Quinlan, chief market strategist at U.S. Trust.
Data suggest that traders from Wall Street in New York to the “Square Mile” in London to the Brazilian stock exchange in San Paulo are spending more time streaming World Cup games on their smartphones or peeking at play on office TVs than scanning their trading terminals for winning stocks.
“It’s as big an attention-getter as there is for Wall Street traders, and these games shift the focus from buying and selling stocks to finding out how to watch discreetly from work,” said Chris Rupkey, chief financial economist at MUFG, a Tokyo-based global bank with offices in New York.