Goldman Sachs is long Brazil — to win the World Cup.
The Wall Street investment bank, run by Lloyd Blankfein, is predicting Brazil will beat Argentina 3-1 in the finals of the quadrennial soccer tournament, to be held this summer.
The bank made the (winning) margin call in a 67-page analytical report headed by Dominic Wilson, Goldman’s chief markets economist, and Jan Hatzius, the bank’s top economist.
The report is the bank’s fifth since 1998, when France won the cup on its home turf.
The most recent prior report, in 2010, written by then-head economist Jim O’Neill, did not predict a winner — just the two semi-finalists.
(O’Neill was part of a group that unsuccessfully tried to buy Champions League team Manchester United later in 2010.)
That 2010 report correctly predicted one of the two semi-finalists, Spain, which won the tourney by defeating the Netherlands 1-0 in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Four years ago, JPMorgan and UBS also issued their own reports. Both fell short, with the House of Dimon predicting England, and the Swiss bank betting on Brazil.
Goldman’s report gives the US team low odds because it’s grouped with powerhouses Germany, Portugal and Ghana, the team that beat it four years ago.
“We could only wish for this level of dedication from our team around the world to their regular tasks,” Wilson and Hatzius write in the report.
Lionel Messi, the captain of Argentina’s team, was the No. 1 “dream team” pick for Goldman clients, according to the report. He’s also the odds-on favorite to score the most goals.
For the 2014 tourney, which starts June 12 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, JPMorgan has so far kept its research focused on the impact of the games on the local economy.