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The Loop

The market selloff: Blame it on Tiger?

August 18, 2009

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 186 points on Monday. Was it Tiger Woods' fault?

The so-called Tiger Effect has manifested itself in a couple of ways in the stock market, one of them coming on the Monday of his U.S. Open playoff with Rocco Mediate in 2008. Wall Street trading was off nearly 10 percent in the hours the playoff was going on.

This year, as Ty Wenger of the Street.com notes, when Woods wins the market typically goes up the following day. Conversely, when he loses it drops.

"Granted, none of those days showed anywhere near the size of yesterday's move," Wenger writes. "Then again, it's not every day that Tiger loses the final round lead in a major to to the world's 110th ranked golfer.

"Those who don't buy that correlation might buy this one: Shares of Nike fell by 2.5% to $55.44 yesterday."

-- John Strege