The Phillies are in the World Series — does this signal a stock market crash?

By Nicole Lyn Pesce October 27, 2022

Over the past century, there appears to be a loose relationship between Philadelphia baseball teams winning the World Series and financial-market meltdowns. 

And the Phillies just made the 2022 World Series.

Let’s look at some dates.

The Philadelphia A’s won the 1929 World Series just a couple weeks before the Wall Street Crash of 1929 on Oct. 28.

Oct. 14, 1929

The day the Philadelphia Phillies won the 1980 World Series coincided with the early 1980s recession. But it should be noted that the U.S. economy had entered recession in January 1980.

Oct. 21, 1980

The Phillies won the World Series again during what’s come to be known as the Great Recession. Although, again, the Great Recession began earlier in 2007.

Oct. 29, 2008

So does this mean that a Philadelphia baseball team is the harbinger of economic disaster?

No, of course not.

The market has many more participants, and it’s impossible to erase all of that just because of a best-out-of-seven-game series coming up this week.

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— Art Hogan, chief market strategist at B. Riley Wealth Management

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Hogan noted that there are many different factors at play affecting the stock market, like economic data, politics and lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

While it’s amusing to look at unscientific barometers of stock-market performance, ultimately they aren’t predictors of a recession.

It certainly makes for fun and interesting cocktail conversations. But I can tell you that no one on the trading desk is taking it more seriously than that.

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— Hogan

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Keep reading on MarketWatch.

Photos by:  iStock/Getty Images Story by:  Nicole Lyn Pesce Google Web Story by:  Amelia Langas

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