Market ******* ysts are usually judged on their ability to call rate decisions or predict price movements, but with the world's biggest football tournament, the 2026 FIFA World Cup, getting underway this Thursday, one prominent investment research firm has turned its models on a rather different kind of ******* et: the beautiful game.
BCA Research, a Montreal-based investment research firm, has published its third edition of what it calls "The Most Important of All Unimportant Forecasts", using a proprietary two-step statistical model to predict the outcome of the tournament.
The verdict? France lifts the trophy after defeating Portugal in the final. England and Spain, the model says, go home in the semi-finals.
Unlike the armchair punditry that tends to dominate the pre-tournament conversation, BCA's approach is rooted in the same discipline the firm applies to sovereign debt and equity markets.
The exercise has been running since 2018, and it correctly predicted that France would win the 2018 final. Four years later, it called Argentina to win the 2022 ******* le in a penalty shootout, no small feat given the chaos of that tournament.
BCA Research, a Montreal-based investment research firm, has published its third edition of what it calls "The Most Important of All Unimportant Forecasts", using a proprietary two-step statistical model to predict the outcome of the tournament.
The verdict? France lifts the trophy after defeating Portugal in the final. England and Spain, the model says, go home in the semi-finals.
Unlike the armchair punditry that tends to dominate the pre-tournament conversation, BCA's approach is rooted in the same discipline the firm applies to sovereign debt and equity markets.
The exercise has been running since 2018, and it correctly predicted that France would win the 2018 final. Four years later, it called Argentina to win the 2022 ******* le in a penalty shootout, no small feat given the chaos of that tournament.
5 days ago
