What Investors Should Be Watching For During the World Cup

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The 2026 FIFA World Cup is in two days. For the first time since 1994, the global game’s biggest stage will be held in North America.

The World Cup is the ultimate moving average for your life. Four years between tournaments lets you take stock — no pun intended — of your life on a macro level. Neatly organized into four-year chapters to ruminate and reflect upon.

You can do the same thing on a macro scale. Beyond the perspective shift, there are a whole lot of areas of Wall Street the next month are about to impact. We’re going to unpack them all.

 

Sometimes, it helps to see the forest from the trees. Let’s double click on the last two years.

2018: Nvidia (NVDA) was trading around split-adjusted $6 in 2018. Bitcoin (BTC) traded around $7,500. Twilio (TWLO) was the best-performing stock of the year.

2022 : NVDA was around $16-$17, BTC around $16,000-$17,000. Occidental Petroleum (OXY) was the best-performing stock of the year.

 

Are there quantitative World Cup signals to follow? Not really. Going back to 2010, here’s how all three major indexes performed during the World Cup, thanks to Senior Quantitative Analyst Rocky White.

Rough sledding back in 2022 for investors during the World Cup, returns that really skew the other three years. The SPX ended up 17% lower in 2022, the Dow down 8.8%, and the Nasdaq off 33%. (The World Cup was held in November-December that year, because Qatar summers were deemed too hot.)

There are some ironic patterns when you squint.

In 2010, the U.S. was embroiled in a Middle East conflict and Wall Street was unpacking an IPO from an Elon Musk company (go figure).

In 2014, the U.S. was transitioning out of Afghanistan and gearing up for an Alibaba IPO that would reset the e-commerce market and at that time be largest IPO in global history. The SPX was also hovering just below record highs.

Time is a flat circle. History doesn’t repeat, but it does rhyme.

Reuters reported the first three nation World Cup — spanning the United States, ?Canada and Mexico — is expected to boost global GDP by roughly $41 billion, according to FIFA’s socioeconomic impact analysis, conducted with the World Trade Organization(WTO). Here’s a quick rundown of the areas impacted:

B. Riley estimates 13.1 million visitors, 21.3 million room nights booked

Jefferies estimates 1 billion pints of beer consumed, a 0.3% lift

Household spending is expected to increase

Ad revenue will hit record highs

Social media traffic will spike

Sports bets will be flowing

 

Here’s a list of all, if not most of the companies mentioned in the article.

Beer, gear, soda, and streaming are the four major food groups for fans come Thursday.

Has there been a recent World Cup Bump for the likes of Nike (NKE), Comcast (CMCSA), Anheuser-Busch Inbev (BUD), and Coca-Cola (KO)?

Sure looks like it. BUD and CMCSA have averaged a 5.1% and 3.4% return during the last four World Cups. KO and NKE at 2% and 0.9% aren’t too shabby for roughly 30-day returns, either.

 

It will be interesting to see if there’s outperformance next month, whether KO tests that double top, if NKE and CMCSA can use this to bounce off their recent lows, and if BUD can stay in that uptrend channel, the site of former highs.

Emerging Markets ETF Quietly Outperforming

Trivia time.

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