Lakers win; Stocks lose

The Lakers curse continues.
Major stock indexes fell for the second day in a row, according to Investor’s Business Daily. It also happens to be two days since the Los Angeles Lakers won the NBA championship.
“Laker championships in 1987, 1988, 2000, 2001 and 2002 corresponded with some bleak times for stocks. And the team's loss last year (2003) just happened to coincide with the end of the biggest bear market since the Depression,” Chris Gessel wrote in “The Big Picture” column in IBD on June 17, 2004.
And now that the Lakers, led by star Kobe Bryant (pictured above), have won the championship again, stocks are tumbling.
Coincidence? Sure. But where’s the fun in that?
Who knows if the down days will continue on Wall Street? But one thing’s likely: the coincidence is bound to end sometime.
Remember the myth that said whenever the Washington Redskins won their final home game before the presidential election, the incumbent party won the White House? And vice versa?
That fell in 2004 when the Redskins lost to the Green Bay Packers. By that myth, Democrat John Kerry should have won the presidency. But he didn’t. Pres. George W. Bush was re-elected.
Before that election, the Redskins Rule had held since 1940, or 16 straight presidential elections. (The Redskins football team moved from Boston to Washington in 1937.)