What We're Reading
How soccer affects the stock market
- The Wall Street Journal, Thursday, February 16, 2012 2:07 AM
Brad Plumer reports that soccer is so popular it is able to bring financial markets to a halt, it seems. A new paper from the European Central Bank finds that
during the 2010 World Cup, the number of stock trades plunged an average of 45 percent in countries whose teams were playing at the time. (A goal caused a further 5 percent drop.)
“We
conclude,” write Michael Ehrmann and David-Jan Jansen, “that stock markets were following developments on the soccer pitch rather than in the trading
pit."
Activity in Chile fell 83 percent when its own team was playing, while trading in Argentina dropped 40 percent even when other teams were in action. Even the USA saw a 40 percent drop
during its own games.
Plumer notes that a few Democrats in the U.S. and countries like France and Germany have proposed a financial transaction tax to, in part, tamp down on market
volatility. But if that doesn’t pan out, there's always the option of simply holding more World Cups.
