If you are looking for a reason to be optimistic about the stock market, try reading today’s sports-page headlines. According to a piece of Wall Street folklore, if a team from the “old” NFL (meaning from before its merger with the AFL) wins the Super Bowl, the stock market will post a gain for the year. And both of this year’s Super Bowl teams, the Cardinals and the Steelers, are from the old NFL.

So a 2009 bull market should be a sure thing, right? Well, not so fast. The indicator failed miserably last year, when a New York Giants victory should have been good for the market. It also missed for four years in a row from 1998 to 2001. The indicator’s backers – primarily Robert Stovall, an 82-year-old Wall Street veteran who now lives in Florida — claim a 79 percent success rate, but there’s no logical connection between a football game and the market. In reality, the Super Bowl “indicator” is nothing more than an interesting coincidence. I like this remark by New York Times columnist Floyd Norris, via Snopes.com:

Anyone foolish enough to bet on a game based on the stock market, or credulous enough to believe a football game can forecast the stock market, probably should hire a money manager, a psychiatrist, or both.