The Wall Street Journal-20080205-TouchDOWn- Giant Win for Stocks

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TouchDOWn! Giant Win for Stocks

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Even New England Patriots fans who are investors can take consolation in one small thing: Maybe the stock market will rise in 2008.

The Super Bowl Predictor of the stock market -- unscientific though it may be -- has called the right direction of the Dow Jones Industrial Average for the year following 33 of the 41 bowls, for an All-Pro-level 80% success rate.

With the New York Giants' surprise win Sunday night, the indicator is pointing "up" for stocks. How it works: Whenever an "original" National Football League team like the Giants wins the big game, the market rises; it falls when the winner is a team like the Patriots, which joined the NFL because of the league's merger with the American Football League in 1970. (Two key American Conference teams, the Colts and the Steelers, are "original" teams, so are bullish; expansion teams count for the conference they're in.)

"Patriots' wins have not been good for the market," notes Robert Stovall, strategist for Wood Asset Management in Sarasota, Fla., who has long tracked the quirky Super Bowl Predictor.

Indeed, one of the Dow's worst drops in recent years, down 16.8% in 2002, came after the Patriots' Super Bowl win against the St. Louis Rams. The Dow industrials did fight off the Pats' win and rise in 2004, one of the few fumbles for the indicator, but blue chips then dutifully fell slightly after the Patriots' win the next year.

In contrast, the Dow industrials roared ahead the two previous times the Patriots got to the summit and fell short: 22.6% after the team's loss to the Bears in the big game in 1986, and again 22.6% after the loss to the Packers in 1997. And the market responded as it should to the Giants' other two Super wins, with the Dow industrials rising in 1987 (up 2.3%) and 1991 (up 20.3%).

Mr. Stovall, a Giants fan but impartial when it comes to the Predictor, doesn't advise anyone to plunge into stocks just because of the Super Bowl.

"Put it this way," he says. "I have yet to put any money into, or put money out of, the market prompted solely by the Super Bowl Predictor. But I can say that the Giants' victory gives me a warm feeling about prospects for full-year 2008." For the market, that is.