The World Cup stock market effect, the idea that football's biggest tournament reaches into share prices, has been a fixture of the financial pages for years. The attention shock is real and enormous. But a new working paper suggests the market response is far smaller than the headlines claim, and that some of it was never there to begin with.
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Be honest.
How many times have you opened your investing app this week?
If you’re like most people, it’s probably more than you’d admit. A quick check while waiting for a coffee. Another glance after the news mentions markets dropping. Maybe one more before bed.
It feels harmless. But it’s one of the biggest things working against long-term investors.
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You are an investor with a long-term investment horizon. What if I could tell you that the next 30 years would contain:
- A significant currency crisis
- At least one global pandemic, and several other major global health threats
- A global financial crisis
- Several new wars and scores of significant armed conflicts
- An escalation in global terrorism events
- Economic trade wars
If crystal balls worked, that’s what we would have been able to tell an investor in 1996. So, what should they have done with that information?
A tale of two decades
New Zealand shares have experienced both strong and challenging periods over the past decade and a half.
From around 2011 through to 2020, New Zealand was one of the stronger performing share markets in the developed world. Investors with meaningful allocations to local companies were well rewarded and portfolios with higher exposure to New Zealand shares compared favourably to more globally diversified portfolios.
More recently, that has changed.
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Following a volatile but generally profitable first three quarters of the year, the majority of markets delivered further gains over the final three months of 2025.
International share markets provided the strongest gains, with the New Zealand and Australian share markets taking a back seat over the quarter. Similarly, with global interest rates having receded from their post-Covid peaks, returns from fixed income assets delivered in line with expectations – moderately positive.
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