Picking a winner in the Super Bowl can feel like a crap shoot, but if you ask Wall Street's rocket scientists they'll tell you the smart money's on the New England Patriots.
Wells Fargo Asset Management's Analytic Investors LLC, the Los Angeles-based quant shop that's beaten the point spread in 10 of the last 14 Super Bowls, says gamblers should take the favored Patriots over the Philadelphia Eagles.
Analytic Investors applies its predictive quant models to the National Football League's championship game. Its data shows that the Patriots will beat the Eagles by at least five points, since the point spread on the game is 4 1/2 points. And that prediction comes despite a few Eagles fans within the ranks.
"I know it'll tick off a few of my Philly fan friends," said Chris Lardieri, one of the study's authors. "But the numbers don't lie."
The model centers on what the firm calls "NFL Alpha," a calculation of each club's investment return, which is a function of whether a team won based on the odds set in the gambling markets. The higher the alpha, the better the performance against the odds. Take the Carolina Panthers, whose rebound from a disappointing 2016 season earned them a 40.2 percent alpha and a top slot on the list. Meanwhile, the Cleveland Browns — only the second team in NFL history to put up a winless season — had the lowest alpha at negative 100 percent.
