(FORTUNE Magazine) – Put aside for a moment those textbook fundamentals. One of the most accurate gauges for predicting which way stocks will swing in 2002 is based on pigskin, not P/Es. Or so history tells us. We're referring, of course, to the Super Bowl stock market indicator, which has proven right a remarkable 83% of the time.

The indicator, first documented in 1990 by finance professors Thomas Krueger of the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse and William Kennedy of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, posits that when a team from the National Football Conference (or its precursor, the National Football League, which included the AFC's Steelers, Browns, and Colts) wins, the market will close higher at the end of the year. If the American Football Conference wins, it's time to sell. The record so far? Since the first Super Bowl in 1967, NFC teams have triumphed 25 times--and in 22 of those years, the Dow gained yardage. The Dow was sacked seven of the ten years that AFC teams took the trophy home. Though the indicator muffed it in the frothy years of 1998 to 2000, it scored again in 2001. The AFC's Baltimore Ravens won, and, well, we all know what happened to the market. While Kennedy no longer believes in the indicator's predictive value (just coincidence, he says), Krueger remains a fan: He often invests based on the results on the Monday following the Super Bowl.

So what will Krueger be doing this January? If Vegas is right, expect lots of selling. Leading online bookmaker Worldsportsbook.com is giving the most favorable odds (four to one) to the AFC's Oakland Raiders.

--Noshua Watson