HypoVereinsbank onemarkets: WM Studie

HypoVereinsbank onemarkets:

• The FIFA World Cup 2014 will be held from 12 June to 13 July in Brazil.
• We developed a football “production” function for forecasting national team success.
• Accordingly, Brazil will win the World Cup 2014! Three of the four semifinalists will be from Latin America (Argentine second and Uruguay third). The only European team in the semifinals will be Germany. The quarterfinal matches are Brazil-Chile, France-Germany, Spain-Uruguay and Argentine-Ghana.
• We compared our model forecasts to betting odds and derived top football trades. We recommend to go aggressively long in Uruguay and Ghana. In contrast, Belgium, Portugal and the Netherlands are quite overpriced.
• Enjoy our analysis and the upcoming World Cup event in Brazil. Let us hope that the “best” team wins!

Not a psychic’s busines
In the meantime, it has become quite a tradition at UniCredit Research. Every two years, I’m the chosen one who is supposed to come up with a thoughtful analysis of football. It relates to either the European Championship or the World Cup. So here I go again. While my colleagues thought very hard about many fascinating topics (a negative deposit rate, the upswing in Europe, etc.), I tried to get a new perspective on football. My first step was what everyone does these days: googling it to get some inspiration. One of my first hits reads as follows: "Germany will win 2014 World Cup”. As you can imagine, I was beaming with joy. Unfortunately, my happiness was short-lived as I continued reading. "Germany is going to prevail, psychic diva Marcia Fernandes said in a highly anticipated prediction at Mystic Fair in Sao Paulo.”1 Hmm, with all due respect to Mrs. Fernandes and her psychic followers, there should be better ways of forecasting international football success! This was the starting point of our analysis. Are there any factors which allow one to forecast the outcome of the World Cup in a consistent and thoughtful way?