“The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary.” Vince Lombardi, Hall of Fame coach of the Green Bay Packers
This Sunday is the big game! The Seattle Seahawks versus the New England Patriots in Super Bowl 60.
First things first, don’t ever invest based on who wins the Super Bowl. Or what will happen at halftime, or the coin toss, or how bad the refs will be. With that out of the way, it is Super Bowl season, and that means it is time to talk about the always popular Super Bowl Indicator!
The Super Bowl Indicator suggests stocks rise for the full year when the Super Bowl winner has come from the original National Football League (now the NFC), but when an original American Football League (now the AFC) team has won, stocks fall. Of course, this is totally random, but it turns out that when looking at the previous 59 Super Bowls, stocks do better when an NFC team wins the big game.
This fun indicator was originally discovered in 1978 by Leonard Kopett, a sportswriter for the New York Times. Up until that point, the indicator had never been wrong.
We like to make it a little simpler and break it down by how stocks do when the NFC wins versus the AFC, ignoring the history of the franchises. As our first table shows, the S&P 500 gained 10.2% on average during the full year when an NFC team has won versus 8.1% when an AFC team has won. Interestingly, after the Eagles victory over the Chiefs last year, the NFC now has 30 Super Bowl wins compared with 29 from the AFC.
So, it is clearcut that investors want the Seahawks to ground the Pats and win, right? Maybe not, as stocks have gained over the full year 12 of the past 13 times when a team from the AFC won the championship, going back 21 years. In fact, the only time stocks were lower was in 2015, when the full year ended down -0.7%, so virtually flat.
By my math, there have been 59 Super Bowls and 22 different winners. I broke things up by franchise and city. For instance, Baltimore has won three championships, but one for the Colts and two for the Ravens. So I differentiated the two. Then the Colts won one in Indy, so I broke that out as well. Either way, I still don’t see my Bengals on here, but I expect that to change next year (thank you Mike Brown and his incompetent family)!
Getting to the two teams in it this year, the Pats have won it all a record tying six times (the Steelers also won it six times) and stocks gained only 6% on average those years, while the Seahawks have won it all only once and stocks gained 11.4% in 2014.
It might not matter who wins, but by how much they win. That’s right, the larger the size of the win, the better stocks do. (Let’s have another disclosure that nearly everything I’m saying here isn’t in any way, shape, or form related to what stocks actually do.)
That’s right, when it is a single digit win in the Super Bowl, the S&P 500 is up less than 7% on average and higher about 62.5% of the time. A double-digit win? Things jump to 11% and 80%. Last year the Eagles beat the Chiefs by 18, which was a clue it would be a good year. 😉 And wouldn’t you know it, when the final score is three touchdowns or more, the S&P 500 gained 13.6% for the year and is higher about 85% of the time.
Here’s a list of all the big blowouts and what happened to stocks those years. Not too bad, huh?
All in all, I’m not a Patriots fan at all and I can’t believe they are back in the game. Give me Seattle all day long!
Here are 12 other takeaways I noticed while slicing and dicing the data:
- The NFC has won 30 Super Bowls versus the AFC’s 29
- Last year’s victory was by 18 points, but the three Super Bowls before that were all decided by 3 points each, the closest three Super Bowls we have ever seen in a row (and small enough for a well-timed flag to make the difference).
- The Steelers and Pats have won the most at six, but the 49ers sit at five and the Chiefs could match them with a win.
- As great as Peyton Manning was, he only won two Super Bowls. His brother also won two. Odds are their kids will win a few more. Or maybe a nephew. (We’re looking at you Arch.) Omaha, Omaha!
- The Lions, Browns, Jags, and Texans have still never made the Super Bowl. I tried to tell all my Lions friends it wasn’t happening!
- The NFC won 13 in a row from 1985 (Bears) until 1997 (Packers).
- The Bills made the Super Bowl four consecutive years, losing each time.
- The highest scoring game was 75 total points in 1995 between the 49ers and Chargers.
- The lowest scoring game was only 16 points in 2019 when the Pats beat the Rams.
- The closest ever was a one-point win for the Giants over the Bills in 1993 (the Scott Norwood game).
- Four years ago, my Bengals were hosed with a horrific holding call in the endzone at the end of the game to literally hand the Rams the game. The script is real my friends.
- In 1990 the 49ers beat the Broncos by 45 for the largest win ever.
So, there you have it, your complete breakdown of the big game. Go Seahawks and have a fun weekend. Oh, and here’s to moving President’s Day to the day after the Super Bowl, one thing we all can agree on!
Lastly, we discussed the Super Bowl Indicator, new leadership at the Federal Reserve (Fed), crashing gold and silver, and so much more in our latest Facts vs Feelings. You can watch it all below.
For more content by Ryan Detrick, Chief Market Strategist click here
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