From Pitch to Portfolio: Did France's 2022 FIFA World Cup Run Move the CAC 40?
0 viewsAbstract
This study examines whether France's performance during the 2022 FIFA World Cup was associated with short-term movements in the CAC 40. Drawing on behavioral-finance research about investor sentiment and limited attention, it uses an event-study design based on France's seven World Cup matches. The main variable is the CAC 40 close-to-close return on the first trading day after each match. Seven post-match observations are compared with 13 control trading days during the tournament period. The average post-match return was -0.57%, compared with +0.13% on control days, a difference of about -0.70 percentage points. A Welch two-sample test finds that this difference is not statistically significant (t = -1.44, p = 0.188). Returns after wins were also not stronger than returns after losses. A sensitivity test shows that the overall result is strongly affected by 15 December 2022, when the CAC 40 fell 3.09% as the European Central Bank raised its key interest rates by 50 basis points and signaled further tightening. Removing that observation changes the average post-match return to -0.15%. The results therefore do not provide evidence of a stable daily football-sentiment effect in this small French sample. They also show why macroeconomic news must be considered when studying sports and financial markets, and why future research would benefit from larger, multi-country intraday datasets.
Keywords
Behavioral Finance, Cac 40, Event Study, Fifa World Cup, France, Investor Sentiment, Stock Returns