Is there any correlation between the European championship and a country's interest rate spread? If one were to think so, one might find a negative correlation by observing that, after Italy eliminated Spain, the spread narrowed by about 20 basis points for Spain and widened slightly for Italy.
Strengthened by this, our observer could predict that on Monday, now that Italy has been eliminated by Germany itself, our spread will shrink. And maybe it will actually happen. But that is not the case and this would be just a good example of a bad method. In fact, the European championship has nothing to do with the spread. The fall in the Spanish spread is due to the fact that the result of the elections on Sunday 26 May was better than expected for the markets: due to the failure of Podemos to break through.
Similarly, the probable drop in our spread on Monday 4 July should reflect the awareness that the shield of public intervention in support of banks up to €150 billion will limit the instability expected by the markets for Italy. But even bad theories could help digest a defeat on penalties.
