Kate Upton

We're officially nominating Kate Upton for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Something you may have picked up on when watching CNBC interviews is that if an anchor or a reporter has fond feelings for their interviewee, they often find it difficult to suppress. Joe Kernen, for example, more or less fellated David Tepper when the hedge fund manager appeared on Squawk Box a while back, telling Tepper his "entire body had chills" at the thought of having him on set (Bill Murray received the same treatment last Friday). To that end, perhaps you saw Darren Rovell's interview with Kate Upton?

U.S. stocks experience significantly better returns during years when an American model graces the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue than during years when the magazine cover features a foreign model, history shows. The S&P 500 had an average return of 14.3 percent during the 17 years since 1978 that featured an American, with positive returns a whopping 88 percent of the time, according to the Bespoke Investment Group blog. That’s about four percentage points above the average return during the years that featured a model from another country. The difference would be even greater, if not for the failure of the indicator in 2008, when the S&P 500 plunged 37 percent after Sports Illustrated featured American-born Marisa Miller and Lehman Brothers collapsed. Last year, Russia’s Irina Shayk graced the cover and the U.S. benchmark subsequently returned a disappointing 2.1 percent.

This is his story.