In another 2 days' time, the world's most eagerly awaited event would take centrestage. This event is the World Cup, which happens once every 4 years. A lot of people would stay up late in the night to watch their favourite teams in action. Everything else would take backstage, including wives, girlfriends, and for some, stock trading. How does the local stock market perform during the World Cup? Here, I compare the performance of the Straits Times Index (STI) during the years when World Cup is staged and during other years.

The World Cup usually starts in mid-Jun and ends in mid-Jul. The group stage, which has the most no. of matches and thus the most no. of fans watching, ends around end-Jun. After which, as more and more countries drop out of the World Cup, there will be less and less matches, which are also spaced more widely ...