Stocks Tend to Zigzag Around Olympics, Says Ned Davis

They usually drop before the summer games, then recover, the research firm found.

How have stocks performed amid the Olympic Games? Historically, for the Summer Olympics, it has been a zigzag; that pattern may continue this year.

Stocks tend to drop leading up to the games, stabilize during them and rally once they are over, according to a study by Ned Davis Research that looked at Summer Olympics held every four years back to 1988. The host country’s stocks, though, usually slide just before the Olympics, then take off during and after.

In 2024, for France’s CAC 40, the performance indeed was down 6.7% for the three months before the games began in Paris, Davis stated. In July, the French index was flat. But since the Olympics commenced on July 24 through Thursday, it rose 1.4%.

This year, as of July when the Olympics started, stocks’ performance on a broad scale also has been muted: For the S&P 500, July and August generally are up. This July, the S&P 500 index rose just 1.1% and the MSCI All-Country World Index 1.75%. Since the games kicked off, the S&P and MSCI indexes are down.

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Of course, no one can say why stocks follow this path in relation to the Olympics. Ned Davis indicated that the market was oversold leading up to the games.

For the last Summer Olympics, in Tokyo in 2021, the ACWI slipped 0.4% three months before, rose 1.4% while the games were in progress, then jumped 6.1% in the three months afterward.

What about bonds? Since 1988, Davis wrote that “the host country’s long-term bond yield has been up slightly heading into the games and has declined afterward, with the yield’s level six months after the games usually lower than its level six months before them.”

For the Japan Olympics, its government bond yield was down a mere 0.03% six months before and up 0.16% for the six months after. How France will fare remains to be seen, long after the last medal is awarded.

SEC’s Best Takes Leave Again to ‘Focus on His Health’

Keith Cassidy will serve as interim acting director of the regulator’s examinations division, as Best takes second medical leave in a year.

By Michael Katz

Richard Best, the director of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Division of Examinations, will take leave from the agency to “focus on his health,” the regulator announced in a statement. The SEC named the division’s deputy director, Keith Cassidy, as acting director.

“I wish Rich well as he takes time to focus on his health,” said SEC Chair Gary Gensler in a statement. “I thank Keith for stepping in again to lead the Division of Examinations.”

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The announcement was made almost exactly one year after the SEC’s July 2023 announcement that Best was taking an extended medical leave; at the time, Cassidy and Natasha Vij Greiner were named interim acting co-directors of the division. Greiner was named director of the SEC’s Division of Investment Management in March.

Cassidy is also the national associate director of the Examination Division’s Technology Controls Program, which oversees tech-focused examinations and manages the SEC’s CyberWatch program and Cybersecurity Program Office. Cassidy was previously the director of the SEC’s Office of Legislative and Intergovernmental Affairs and chief of staff and counsel at the Justice Department’s Office of Legislative Affairs.

Best has been the director of the SEC’s Examinations Division since May 2022, following a two-month period as its acting director. He joined the regulator in 2015 as the regional director of the SEC’s Salt Lake regional office. He was named regional director of the Atlanta office in 2018 and then regional director of the New York office in 2020 before being tapped to head the examinations unit.