Hey, speaking of the Yankees, this is a good opportunity to discuss confirmation of Russ’ old theory about stocks and the Yankees.
Turns out, he’s not the only one who thinks traders like the Yanks.
Several years ago, Russ pitched to me the idea that you could predict the fate of the market on any given spring or summer day based on the outcome of the prior day’s Yankees game. When they win, it’s up, when they lose down. The argument was not pie-in-the-sky, but indicated that floor traders and Wall Street shakers were likely to be Yankee fans and allow their subconscious feelings of optimism based on their favorite team bleed into buying and selling on the market.
In a world where casino gambling is labeled as a serious investment, the theory struck me as about as plausible as any other. Obviously it would take quite a while for people not versed in computer programming to come up with a formula to test this, although anyone who was good at correlating things could probably plug in the baseball encyclopedia against stock history pretty fast. After all, baseball stats and stock market fluctuations are probably the two areas subjected the most rigorous numeric analysis over time, at least in this country.
So CNBC’s discovery that the Yanks have an overall positive impact on the market, especially when they go all the way, is utterly unsurprising to me. The way things are going, you might be better off figuring out stocks to pick based on the Steinbrenner family’s most precious investments rather than corrupt analysts who’ve been bought off by Goldman Sachs.
This really just gives me one more reason to root for the Phillies.
