You might want to avoid the stock market until the Winter Olympics ends on Feb. 20.
This is not as off-the-wall a recommendation as you might think. At least in academic circles it has been well known for 15 years that international sports competitions often lead to below-average global stock-market returns.
The study that first reported that correlation, in 2007, was published in a prestigious academic journal, the Journal of Finance. Titled “Sports Sentiment and Stock Returns,” its authors were
Alex Edmans
of the London Business School; Diego García of the University of Colorado Boulder; and Oyvind Norli of the Norwegian School of Management.
Prof. García emphasizes that the authors’ findings were based on an average of thousands of international sports competitions, focusing on World Cup soccer matches, cricket competitions and the…
