Why Investors Should Watch the World Cup
The next month of soccer should have a wide-ranging impact on the stock market.
The 2026 FIFA World Cup is in five days. For the first time since 1994, the global game’s biggest stage will be held in North America. I’m like a kid in a candy store.
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.
Here’s my own timeline.
2002—12. My parents waking me up at 2:30 a.m. (Korea time) to watch the US stun Portugal. Our youth coach was Portuguese and canceled practice the next day.
This quote hit me like a ton of bricks.
Someone told me once that the best World Cup you ever saw was the one you watched when you were 11 years old. Give or take a year or two either side, of course. The appreciation sweet spot is right at the beginning of adolescence, when you’re old enough to appreciate the magic of it, but young enough not to understand cynicism.
2006—16. Forza Italia. Italians in my New England town going buck wild.
2010—20 years old, training for my junior year at Centre. Watched every single game on my old ratty couch at home. Wavin’ Flag still brings me unadulterated joy.
2014—24. Enjoying post-grad life in Cincinnati. Jermaine Jones’ banger on the big Fountain Square TV=scenes.
2018—28. One year into Schaeffer’s after stints in politics, Bengals PR, and other odd jobs to make ends meet. Starting to figure out this whole life thing.
2022—32. In a serious relationship, my first. Playing days winding down, and ready to enter the next stage of life.
2026—An incredible wife, a Substack, and no speed left in my legs.
Very rarely do sports and stocks intersect on a global level, but the World Cup is an outlier event. Wall Street could see a ton of trends emerge in the coming month, all from the impact of the games, and we’re going to unpack them all. And while it feels gross to take the magic and purity out of the game by talking stocks and commerce, the sad reality is that’s what the game has come to.
Sorry, just had to get that off my chest.
As a palette cleanser, how about a trip down memory lane?
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.
Follow the Money
I promise I’m not getting a cut from FIFA for this type of promotion (though I should, given how corrupt they are ;) )
Reuters wrote a tremendous piece on the wide-ranging impact the World Cup has on commerce. Here are some highlights.
The first three‑nation World Cup (WC) — 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).
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. (I’ll do my part)
Household spending is expected to increase
Ad revenue will hit record highs
Social media traffic will spike
Sports bets will be flowing
I compiled a list of all the stocks mentioned in the article.
Can this be the shot in the arm needed for travel, restaurant, and gambling sectors? How much will increased social media traffic and ad revenue really impact Alphabet (GOOGL)? Lots to monitor in the coming weeks, and that’s not even mentioning the actual footy. I can’t wait.
Of that list, I’d say beer, gear, soda, and streaming are the four major food groups for fans come Thursday. So I took the top four to Rocky.
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.
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 Bucking Their Head, Quietly
Trivia time: Which major ETFs are up across one-week, one-month, three-month, six-month, and one-year timeframes? You’d probably guess SMH, XLK, QQQ, and…..Emerging Markets (EEM)?
Perfect ETF to analyze for World Cup!
EEM hit a record high of $70.86 on June 2 and has promptly taken a haircut. Even after Friday’s 4% selloff, EEM is up 21% in 2026 —lapping the S&P 500’s 9.6% year-to-date gain, might I add — and just outside the uptrend channel since the spring.
EEM’s 50-day put/call ratio of 1.73 sits in the 100th percentile of its annual range. Trade-Alert shows some spread activity at the January 2027 70 strike, and some sell-to-open activity at the June 66 put. Nooooticing.
Let’s make one thing clear, the World Cup will have next to zero impact on emerging markets. Just wanted to use soccer as an excuse to shine a light on an underrated ETF.
Around the World
I thought it’d be fun to finish with a run down the leaderboard of the world’s most prolific stocks from each country (have to trade in the U.S. though). Which country (aka stock) would you pick to win the World Cup (aka buy and hold?) (bear in mind, a lot of these names trade in the U.S. through American Depositary Receipts (ADRs)
Thank you to the game that brought me so much. Keep on keepin on
I was 12 my first World Cup 1986 great article about the relationship of the World Cup and stocks. Thank you