The investors are not big winners when the World Cup-crazed globe is tuned into every bicycle kick, https://www.usatoday.com.
All those big goals celebrated on the pitch during the World Cup probably won't help stock portfolio score gains, historical performance data show.
From the first match to the final game in the 20 World Cups since 1930, the Standard & Poor's 500 stock index has posted an average loss of 1.01 per cent, Bespoke Investment Group data show.
"Investors should probably keep their eyes on the pitch rather than the market if they're looking for joy," quips Paul Hickey, co-founder of Bespoke.
The stock market's subpar performance when the world's biggest soccer tournament is going on could also be a function of stock traders being more interested in the dazzling ball-handling skills of Argentina's Lionel Messi and Portugal's Cristiano Ronaldo than the dizzying gyrations of the Dow.
"It's the 'beautiful game' - better to watch the ball than the screen," says Joe Quinlan, chief market strategist at US Trust.
The biggest market declines during the World Cup were a 7.03 per cent drop for the 2002 world cup, a 9.12 per cent fall in 1974 and a 11.86 per cent drubbing in 1950, Bespoke data show.
Data suggests that traders from Wall Street in New York to the "Square Mile" in London to the Brazilian stock exchange in San Paulo are spending more time streaming World Cup games on their smartphones or peeking at play on office TVs than scanning their trading terminals for winning stocks.
Trading volume in major world stock indexes during the "knockout round" of the 2014 World Cup held in Brazil fell dramatically compared to the same period a year earlier when there were no games, according to Thomson Reuters.
In the US, the number of shares changing hands on the S&P 500 dropped by more than 18 per cent. The FTSE 100 in London saw a nearly 23 per cent decline, while trading volume in Germany's DAX 30 fell 33 per cent and Brazil's Bovespa cratered more than 70 per cent. The World Cup is fast-becoming "must-watch" TV that trumps business news when play is in action.
"It's as big an attention-getter as there is for Wall Street traders, and these games shift the focus from buying and selling stocks to finding out how to watch discreetly from work," says Chris Rupkey, chief financial economist at MUFG, a Tokyo-based global bank with offices in New York.
"The final games are so big that even the TV screens on the trading floor will be tuned to the games and away from financial news networks."
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