A BULL' S MARKET; JORDAN'S HOOP CAREER LINKED TO DOW'S RISE.Byline: Pete Coates Bloomberg News If you want the bull market to keep going, pray that Michael Jordan This article is about the former basketball player. For other uses, see Michael Jordan (disambiguation). Michael Jeffrey Jordan (born February 17 1963) is a retired American professional basketball player. keeps playing basketball. You don't think so? Well, the long bull market in stocks has run remarkably parallel with the Bulls market in Chicago led by perennial scoring leader Jordan. Since the end of 1990, the Dow Jones industrial average Dow Jones Industrial Average The best known U.S. index of stocks. A price-weighted average of 30 actively traded blue-chip stocks, primarily industrials including stocks that trade on the New York Stock Exchange. , the most popular market indicator, has about tripled. In the same time, Jordan's Bulls have won five National Basketball Association National Basketball Association (NBA) U.S. professional basketball league. It was formed in 1949 by the merger of two rival organizations, the National Basketball League (founded 1937) and the Basketball Association of America (1946). championships. The only poor year for the market in all these seven years was 1994, when the Dow Jones average Dow Jones Average, indicators used to measure and report value changes in representative stock groupings on the New York stock exchange. There are four different averages—industrial stocks, transportation stocks, utility stocks, and a composite average of all rose a measly measly said of beef, pork and mutton because infected meat has a speckled appearance thought to resemble measles (1) in humans. See also cysticercus. 2 percent. That, of course, was during Jordan's retirement from basketball and ill-fated attempt to play baseball. (The Dow rose 52 points the day Jordan gave up trying to hit curveballs to return to the hardwood.) ``Nobody can predict what the market is going to do,'' said Peter Russ, managing director at Laidlaw Global Securities Inc. in New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of . ``Using Jordan to predict the market has as much validity as (using) all the great thinkers in the world.'' It may be no accident that the Dow fell 554 points the other day, raising questions of the market's vulnerability. In Chicago, at the same time all the talk was about how Jordan might retire after this season and the Bulls then going to the dogs. The Jordan effect on the market seems to have begun well before he became a Chicago Bull. It began in a small way, to be sure. The Dow rose 2.89 points Feb. 18, 1963, the first market session after Jordan's birth. Can it be an accident that analysts trace the beginning of the bull stock market to 1982, the year the University of North Carolina Tar Heels The North Carolina Tar Heels are the athletic teams for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill ("UNC"). The name Tar Heel is also often used to refer to individuals from the state of North Carolina, the Tar Heel State. - starring Michael Jordan - won the NCAA NCAA abbr. National Collegiate Athletic Association championship? The Dow gained about 30 percent during Jordan's college career. The market did even better after the Bulls selected Jordan in the 1984 NBA draft The NBA Draft is an annual North American event in which the National Basketball Association's (NBA) thirty teams (29 in the United States and one in Toronto, Canada) can select players who wish to join the league. . There was the crash in 1987, of course, when the Dow sank 23 percent in one day. The market roared back from that. Not coincidentally, the 1987-88 season was when Jordan established himself as the game's best player, winning his first of four Most Valuable Player awards. In 1996, the Bulls won their fourth title, and the Dow rallied past the 5,600 level. The Bulls' fifth title in June came around the time the Dow eclipsed the 7,700 barrier. Now Jordan hints he may retire after this season. That could mean the bull run in stocks is over. ``The market is getting tired,'' said Robert Stovall, president of Stovall/Twenty-First Advisors Inc., which supervises about $1 billion in assets. ``When Jordan retires, the economy and the stock market may do the same thing in sympathy.'' CAPTION(S): Photo, Chart Chart: (Color) JORDAN EFFECT When the Chicago Bulls and Michael Jordan are winning, so is the market. The worst year this decade for the market was in 1994, when Jordan retired from basketball to play baseball. He returned midway through the 1994-95 season. Photo: (Color) Bulls star Michael Jordan jams one home Wednesday in Chicago against the Orlando Magic. Associated Press |
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