NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Stock market investors should be pulling for the Detroit Pistons in the National Basketball Association finals due to the Shaq curse, according to a published report Thursday.

Other sports/stock curses • Patriots win...bulls lose? • A car curse at Daytona • Bulls trample stadium curse

The New York Daily News pointed out that the Dow Jones industrial average posted its only three losses in the past 15 years in the years that the Los Angeles Lakers won the NBA championship, 2000, 2001 and 2002. Meanwhile the Dow had its best year during that period -- a 33.5 percent gain -- in 1995, when the Orlando Magic, led by current Lakers star center Shaquille O'Neal, lost the finals to the Houston Rockets.

The paper quoted a number of stock traders saying that while they don't necessarily believe in the curse, they'll be cheering for the underdog Pistons just in case.

"I'm definitely rooting for Detroit just because of that," said Tim Ghriskey, chief investment officer of Solaris Asset Management. "You want to have any advantage you can."

However the paper's report didn't point out that the Dow fell 4.3 percent in 1990, the last year the Pistons won the championship on the team's last trip to the finals. The Dow did gain 27 percent in 1989, the year the Pistons beat the Lakers. But it was also higher in the six years Los Angeles won the championship before 2000. And in 12 years that Los Angeles lost the finals, the Dow lost ground in four of the years, while posting modest gains of less than 5 percent in two other years.

So far this year the Dow is off 1.8 percent. Even those traders speaking to the News say no one should base investment decisions on the outcome of a basketball game.

"We're forever in search of the Holy Grail of investing and that's some formula to give us the answer," said Hugh Johnson, the chief investment officer at First Albany "That's the whole problem. These things work - until you try to use them."

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This is not the only stock curse tied to the performance of sports teams. The most famous is the Super Bowl Stock indicator, which suggests that stocks will be down this year due to the National Football League championship won by the New England Patriots, originally an American Football League team.

There are also curses involving the company that sponsors the winning driver in the Daytona 500 and the companies that pay to have their names on stadiums and arenas.