Soccer sentiment and investment opportunities in the Korean stock market

We have found a significant sentiment effect from national soccer match outcomes on the Korean stock market, consistent with studies on other countries. Further investigation reveals, however, that such sentiment effect is extremely short-lived and the magnitude of ensuing expected returns based on the sentiment effect is about the same as the transaction costs. Therefore, we conclude that although a significant soccer-sentiment effect from losses exists, it seems almost impossible to devise reliable arbitrage opportunities from it due to its short duration and the small magnitude of expected returns.