Golf in Full Swing?
This essay originally appeared in The
Elliott Wave Financial Forecast in October 1997.
Let us provide some brief history on golf’s pedigree as one of the great bull
market games. The first major American golf tournament was played in 1895,
eight months before the initiation of the Dow Jones Industrial Average and
10 months before a low that still stands. In each successive wave of rising
stock prices, golf’s popularity has surged. In the 1920s, country clubs sprang
up across the nation. The Depression, “of course, put a pinch on the country-club
lifestyle. But by the late 1950s, the concept was ready for a comeback.” In
the 1980s, Japan’s booming mood coincided with an outrageous golf craze (noted
by The
Elliott Wave Theorist in February 1989), and since 1989, the number of
golf communities in the U.S. has more than doubled.
The game’s popularity is so clearly in lock-step with the stock market that Barron’s noted in a 1997 golf section, “We can now report that there appears to be a definite connection between golf and stocks.” The very fact that Barron’s has supplemented its financial coverage with a golf issue is itself further evidence. Business Week and The Wall Street Journal have also added golf advertising sections, just as The Magazine of Wall Street mixed golf ads with its stock market coverage in 1929.
Golf heroes are also a feature of bull markets. On the pro tour,
Tiger Woods has established himself as the sport’s dominant player, just as
Jack Nicklaus did the mid-1960s and Bobby Jones in the late 1920s. “Tigermania”
has coincided with an unprecedented middle-class enthusiasm for the game.