Betting on Football

The Super Bowl indicator has been correct in 32 of the 40 games, giving it an accuracy rate of 80%.

A game-day factoid: There have been seven other years when two original NFL teams faced off in the Super Bowl. Six times, the market, as tracked by the Dow Jones Industrial Average, went up.

The Feminine Mystique

When women show more leg, some market seers say the market is destined to show you the money. Shorter skirts are fashion's way of saying that consumers are confident and ready to live it up, while dour ankle-length skirts reflect a dreary market outlook.

This year, female intuition predicts an advance for the Dow. "Hemlines are definitely up," says Elena Castaneda, president of New York Image Consultant.

Another good sign: Women are buying less lipstick.

Leonard Lauder, chairman of Estee Lauder Companies, gets the credit for connecting a spike in lipstick sales to a slump in the economy. Lipstick is a cheap pick-me-up for consumers when they are wary of more extravagant indulgences.

Lipstick sales rose after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and went still higher the following year as the bear market of 2000-to-2002 dragged on. But they've been trending downward ever since.

Wall Street Journal


Bottom line: few people outperform the market five years straight