Since 1967 there has been a Super Bowl.  The Packers vs. the Steelers this coming Sunday will represent the 45^th battle for league supremacy and crowning of the world champions.  The game was originally comprised of the top team from the American Football League (AFL) facing off against the top team from the National Football League (NFL).  Since then there has been an alarming correlation between a winning team’s league of origin and the behavior of the stock market the following year.  This completely bogus correlation is known as the Super Bowl Stock Market Predictor, and it illustrates the phenomenon that if the team that wins the Super Bowl has its roots in the original NFL, the stock market will increase.  However, if the winning team was originally from the AFL, the stock market will decline.

Two very bored researchers decided to test the theory in 1990.  Back then, using 20 years of Super Bowl results from the first in 1967 through 1988, the predictor proved to be right 91% of the time!   (more…)