I found this great article on the SuperBowl Indicator. Where I grew up (San Diego) there was a deep cultural war taking place between football fanatics and soccer fanatics. Often discussions would digress in skill versus smash, and I, myself played a bit of soccer. Basically the article points to the correlation between the winning teams NFL history and stock market growth. Anyhow, I did some quick history of the stock market returns and the World Cup. In 2006 Italy (a European team) won, and the stock market went down. In 2002 Brazil (Yup, South America) beat out Germany, and the stock market went down. In 1998 France (you can guess), beat out Brazil, and the stock market went up. In 1994 Brazil won again, and the market sank. Anyways you can go a ways back and there seems to be no correlation between European or South American wins and growth. On the surface it seems American Football has won round one of the stock indicator battle to the death.