Nevin's Data "Points"

Will your 401(k) be bumped up by a Buccaneers victory—or chipped by the Chiefs? That’s what adherents of the so-called Super Bowl Theory would likely conclude, after all. The theory is that when a team from the old National Football League wins the Super Bowl, the S&P 500 will rise, and when a team from the old American Football League prevails, stock prices will fall. It’s a “theory” that has been found to be correct nearly 80% of the time—for 40 of the 54 Super Bowls, in fact.  Not that it hasn’t had its shortcomings. One need look back no further than last year’s win by the AFC’s Kansas City Chiefs (yes,  these  Kansas City Chiefs) over the NFC Champion San Francisco 49ers to refute the applicability (or did your 401(k) miss that 18.4% rise in the S&P 500?). Or how about the year before that when the AFC’s New England Patriots (who once were the AFL’s Boston Patriots) bested the NFC champion Los Angeles Rams (the S&P 500 was up more...

February 2 is the day upon which America turns its attention to Punxsutawney, PA (and what seems to be a rapidly expanding array of Punxsutawney Phil wannabes) to get a read on the duration of winter. The theory, of course, is that if your local groundhog sees his (or her?) shadow when he/she emerges from his/her burrow, it will send him/her scurrying back inside, and with that action foretell six more weeks of winter, whereas no shadow portends a timely/early spring. However, like weather forecasters everywhere, Phil is often wrong in his predictions. Indeed, by some estimates  (and going back to 1887) he’s only been right… 39% of the time (and since 1969, only about 36% [i] ). As complicated as it surely must be to accurately predict the end of winter, that at least is an event in the relatively near term. And one that (for Punxsutawney Prognostication, anyway) requires only the emergence from one’s burrow. Predicting retirement outcomes… well, that’s a whole o...