Golf and the global stock market have a special relationship, with the money won by professional golfers almost perfectly correlating with stock market performance for the past eight decades, according to a new book.
The book, “Bulls, Birdies, Bogeys & Bears: The Remarkable & Revealing Relationship Between Golf & Investment Markets,” is written by Keith Armstrong, former chairman of the ANZ Group's regional investment committee and chief investment officer of its private bank.
Mr. Armstrong writes that “the movements and developments, growth and contraction, of both … have been, and will likely continue to be, closely correlated, and to a far greater extent than any other sport.”
The growth in total prize money won by the world's leading golfer has tracked the total return of the global stock markets fairly closely.
For example, in 1990, a disappointing year in the global markets, Greg Norman had top winnings of $1.2 million, down 17% from Tom Kite's winnings in 1989.
The following year, in 1991, as the markets continued to struggle, Corey Pavin won the money title with a total of $925,000.
While Mr. Armstrong writes that it would be overly simplistic to assume some kind of specific cause and effect between golf and the stock market, it's more of a measure of what he calls “collective social mood,” mirroring each other since the Great Depression.
