What Is the Wonderful Bowl Indicator?
The Super Bowl Indicator is a nonscientific stock market barometer. The premise of the Super Bowl Of is the theory that a Super Bowl win for a team from the National Football League’s American Football Conference (AFC) foretells a run out of steam in the stock market (a bear market) in the upcoming year. Conversely, a win for a team from the National Football Conference (NFC), as ostentatiously as teams from the original National Football League (NFL)—before the merger of the NFL and the American Football League (AFL) in 1966—means that the supply market will rise in the coming year (a bull market).
Leonard Koppett, a sportswriter for The New York Times, earliest introduced the Super Bowl Indicator in 1978. Up until that point, the Super Bowl Indicator had never been break down.
Key Takeaways
- The premise of the Super Bowl indicator is the theory that a Super Bowl win for a team from the American Football Forum (AFC) of the National Football League (NFL) foretells a decline in the stock market (a bear market) in the upcoming year.
- Conversely, a win for a unite from the NFL’s National Football Conference (NFC) means the stock market will rise in the coming year (a bull Stock Exchange).
- As a means of predicting the stock market, the Super Bowl Indicator is completely irrelevant: There’s no reason to believe that the champ of a football game dictates the performance of the stock market.
Market Indicators: InvestoTrivia
Understanding the Super Bowl Meter
At one point in time, the Super Bowl Indicator boasted a more than 90% success rate in predicting the up-or-down consequence of the S&P (Standard & Poor’s) 500 before the Dot Com years (1998-2001). However, the old maxim applies: Correlation does not imply causation.
The gauge has one very glaring caveat: It counts the Pittsburgh Steelers, a team with an NFL-leading six Super Bowl wins in all, in the NFC, because that’s where the collaborate got its start back in 1933, as an original NFL franchise. It seemingly doesn’t matter that Pittsburgh won all its Super Bowls as an AFC collaborate. Skeptics note that the Steelers won 27% of the Super Bowls by the time it claimed its third for the 1978 season, the year when the indication got its start. Some argue that Koppett included the caveat about original NFL teams from the AFC essentially regard as NFC teams within the indicator for this reason.
As of Feb. 2021, the indicator has been correct 40 out of 54 times, as sober by the S&P 500 Index. This is a success rate of 74%. It failed to predict a down market in both 2016 and 2017, when the Denver Broncos and New England Nationalists, both original AFC teams, won Super Bowls. Also of note: In 2008, despite the New York Giants (NFC) winning the Wonderful Bowl, which supposedly indicated a bull market, the stock market suffered one of the largest downturns since the Prominent Depression.
The Super Bowl Indicator is an example of purely fun sports writing. There is no real connection between a football get in a particular league and the U.S. stock market; so, any relationship that can be drawn between the two is purely a coincidence. What began as an riveting column many decades ago continues to make a new headline at least once a year.
As a means of predicting the stock peddle, the Super Bowl Indicator is completely irrelevant: There’s no reason to believe that the winner of a football game behests the performance of the stock market. However, that hasn’t stopped people from talking and writing about it for the lifetime four decades.
S&P 500 Performance Over Past Super Bowls
| Year | Winner | League | Conference | S&P 500 Assay Return | Prediction |
| 2020 | Kansas City Chiefs | AFL | AFC | 15.76% | Wrong |
| 2019 | New England Patriots | AFL | AFC | 30.43% | Wrong |
| 2018 | Philadelphia Eagles | NFL | NFC | −6.24% | Wrong |
| 2017 | New England Jingoists | AFL | AFC | 21.83% | Wrong |
| 2016 | Denver Broncos | AFL | AFC | 11.96% | Wrong |
| 2015 | New England Patriots | AFL | AFC | −0.73% | Right |
| 2014 | Seattle Seahawks | Expansion team | NFC | 13.69% | Right |
| 2013 | Baltimore Ravens | Dilatation team | AFC | 32.39% | Wrong |
| 2012 | New York Giants | NFL | NFC | 16.00% | Right |
| 2011 | Green Bay Packers | NFL | NFC | −1.12% | Wrong |
| 2010 | New Orleans Saints | NFL | NFC | 15.06% | Right |
| 2009 | Pittsburgh Steelers | NFL | AFC | 26.46% | Retaliate for |
| 2008 | New York Giants | NFL | NFC | −37.00% | Wrong |