Money Poll #23: Super Bowl Prediction

I know, I know… The connection between the Super Bowl and personal finance is tenuous at best, but… The NFC and AFC Championship games are in the books, and we now know that it’ll be the Colts vs. the Bears playing for the whole enchilada down in Miami on February 4th. Since this is nominally a ‘Money Poll,’ I’ll just point out the reputed connection between the outcome of the Super Bowl and stock market performance during the following year.

(And yes, there is a poll somewhere down there after all this junk — keep scrolling!)

Briefly, the ‘Super Bowl Indicator‘ holds that whenever a team from the old AFL (now the AFC) wins the Super Bowl, the stock market will experience a down year. But when the winner comes from the old NFL (now the NFC), we’ll experience a bull market. While the Super Bowl Indicator has been historically quite accurate, with a 90% success rate in the first 31 years of the Super Bowl, it’s been considerably less reliable in recent years.

So what does this all mean for this year? In the case of the Chicago Bears, it’s pretty easy. They got their start in the old NFL, and they currently reside in the modern-day NFC. So if they win, legend has it that we’ll experience a bull market. But it’s not so clear in the case of the Indianapolis Colts… The original Colts team actually started out in the All-America Football Conference (AAFC) in 1946 as the Miami Seahawks. They moved to Baltimore and adopted their new moniker just a year later, and in 1950 they joined the NFL. They folded after that season, however, and didn’t re-emerge until 1953 when a Baltimore based group took over the remains of the old Dallas Texans. It wasn’t until 1970 that the Colts (along with the Steelers and Browns) switched from the old NFL to the AFC during the NFL/AFL merger.

Hmmm… Even though they currently reside in the AFC, the Colts technically hail from the old NFL. In the context of the Super Bowl Indicator, this means that if the Colts win, we’re due for a bull market. So it’s literally a win-win situation — there should be a bull market regardless of the outcome of the Super Bowl.

Then again, no matter what happens, a team from the old NFL will lose… Does that mean we’re in for a bear market either way? Or maybe current affiliations trump all else in cases such as these. In that case, a Bears victory would signal a coming bull market, whereas a Colts victory would signal a looming bear market. Aye yae yae! Who can keep track?

Anyway, this was all just a long preamble to a poll on who you think will win the Super Bowl this year — the Colts or the Bears? Just in case you’re sitting on the fence, here’s a random bit of trivia for you: The Colts were the first NFL team to have cheerleaders.

As always, feel free to liven things up by leaving a comments.

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