Super Bowl Sunday is almost upon us.

It's the last meaningful football we'll watch for more than half a year. It's Kendrick Lamar. It's a slate of fresh ads. It's pomp. It's circumstance. And you can complain all you want, but it's Taylor Swift, too.

But you already knew all that.

What you might not know is that the Super Bowl is also the focal point of one of the goofiest signals of future stock-market performance:

The Super Bowl Indicator.

Young and the Invested Tip: Or, you could just ignore yearly indicators and buy stocks you can hold without worry for decades.

The Tea

We all know that person who loves to inform all their friends that they're not watching the Super Bowl. Heck, maybe you are that person.

But there are fewer of those people for the Super Bowl than for any other televised event.

The Super Bowl, year in and year out, is the most watched television broadcast in the United States each year. In 2024, roughly 123 million Americans tuned in, and when you add the rest of the globe—it was broadcast in 25 languages across 195 countries—that number exceeds 200 million.

That's because the Super Bowl isn't just an event for diehard NFL fans—it's a spectacle that even casual looky-loos can turn on for a few hours of mindless viewing.

And it's also something of a crystal ball.

Indeed, the winner of Super Bowl LIX might very well determine the direction of the stock market for the rest of 2025.

The Take

Investors are commonly on the lookout for market signals that can help them get an edge. Economic data, for instance, or stock charts are two great sources for useful indicators that active investors can put to work.

Sometimes, though, market analysts look a little farther afield—OK, a lot farther afield—to figure out what the stock market will do next. In fact, going to a psychic or reading tea leaves would be downright scientific compared to the methods that would-be stock market prognosticators employ to get an investing edge. 

The price of a Big Mac.

Cardboard-box manufacturing. 

Lipstick.

Sales of men's underwear.

The cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue. 

These are all things that supposedly rational human beings have used in their hunt for a signal—any signal at all—of which way the stock market might sway.

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But perhaps the most famous of these outside-the-box cues is the Super Bowl Indicator, which was first coined in 1978 by New York Times sportswriter Leonard Koppett. 

In short, it goes like this:

• If the Super Bowl's winner comes from the original National Football League (now the National Football Conference, or NFC), stocks will rise for the rest of the year. 
• If the Super Bowl's winner comes from the original American Football League (now the American Football Conference, or AFC), stocks will fall for the rest of the year.

If you feel silly reading it, imagine how silly I feel writing it.

Anyways, if the thick blanket of sarcasm hasn't already clued you in, the Super Bowl has zero material effect on the stock market. 

I can't repeat this enough: Please, please do not invest based on the outcome of a football game. The Super Bowl Indicator is a welcome bit of nonsense that helps spice up a typically dry financial topic. 

However, I always say that nonsense is good for the soul, so let's explore this nonsense a little further.

I can't blame Koppett too much for giving this idea the time of day. After all, when he identified the signal, it had never been wrong before. As of 1978, the Super Bowl Indicator was flawless.

But fast forward a few decades, and the indicator's track record has become far muddier.

Here to help us understand more about the Super Bowl Indicator for the third consecutive year is Ryan Detrick, Chief Market Strategist at Carson Group (and a pretty good LinkedIn follow if you're an investor), who recently penned his annual thoughts on this phenomenon.

Take it away, Ryan!

The AFC/NFC Breakdown Looks Much Different Now

"We'd never suggest investing purely based on the winner of the Super Bowl, but it is kind of fun to talk about this one," Detrick says.

Detrick prefers a simpler look at the Super Bowl Indicator, evaluating how stocks do when the NFC wins versus the AFC, ignoring the history of the franchises.

"As our first table shows, the S&P 500 gained 10% on average during the full year when an NFC team has won versus 8.1% when an AFC team has won," Detrick says. "Interestingly, the AFC and NFC have each won 29 Super Bowls."

OK. So, while clearly stocks don't go down after an AFC win anymore, the NFC still maintains a performance edge.

But don't sing "Fly, Eagles Fly" quite yet.

More recent history shows extremely favorable outcomes when the AFC brings home the Vince Lombardi Trophy. Specifically, stocks have gained across the full year in 12 of the past 13 times a team from the AFC won the Super Bowl. That one down year? 2015, and we're talking a 0.7% decline. That's effectively flat.

The Refs Love the Chiefs … But So Does Wall Street

You'll notice the outstanding returns for the Chiefs over its past three wins. Counting its fourth Super Bowl win (against the Vikings in 1970), stocks have averaged a 15.9% annual gain in the years the Chiefs win it all. The Eagles? They only won it once (against the Patriots in 2018), and stocks dropped by about 6%.

"Anyone who has seen the Chiefs play the past few years knows they tend to get all the calls and 'the script' clearly wants Taylor Swift and her team to keep winning," Detrick says. "But given how stocks have done quite well after previous Chief Super Bowl victories, maybe the NFL knows something?"

Cross Your Fingers for a Blowout

If your team isn't playing in the Super Bowl (and if you're a Browns fan like me, that's every year since they started playing the Super Bowl), you'll likely go into the game hoping that we simply get a close, entertaining game.

But that might not be great news for your brokerage account!

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"The larger the size of the win, the better stocks do," Detrick says. "When it is a single-digit win in the Super Bowl, the S&P 500 is up less than 6% on average and higher about 60% of the time," Detrick says. "A double-digit win? Things jump to about 11% and 79%. And wouldn't you know it, when the final score is three touchdowns or more, the S&P 500 gained 13.6% for the year and is higher about 85% of the time."

I Guess We're Rooting Against the Phillies, Too

However, Detrick's most compelling data deals not with conferences, specific teams, even point margins … but cities.

In short: At the risk of being overly dramatic, Philadelphia winning a major-league sports title—at least in baseball and football—is a harbinger of stock-market doom:

Then again, what do we know? I'm a Browns fan, and Detrick roots for the Bengals. No one is less qualified to talk about Super Bowl wins than us.

Riley & Kyle

Young and the Invested

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