Armageddon Alert: Will “Brexit” create a black hole that swallows planet earth & the universe ?
Reading the press and comments of market pundits lately, one might get the impression that the end is near if the British referendum next week will result in a vote for leaving the EU.
Some examples (I spared myself the links)
- Pound may drop more than 10%
- Stocks could drop 30-40%
- Gold will shoot up by more than 10%
- 140 bn German exports in danger
- Which countries will be next to exit
- Uk house prices could fall by 18% after Brexit
- Brexit will cost Germany 3% GDP growth
Clearly, my own headline looks a little bit exaggerated compared to this but not that much.
My take on Brexit and potential impacts:
Analytically one could break down the “Brexit” case in different issues:
- Will UK voters vote for Brexit (yes/no)
- What will actually happen if the vote is for Brexit ?
- What is already reflected in market prices
Issue 1: Will UK voter vote for Brexit
This is the easiest one. The polls say something like 50/50 at the moment, however I do think that a lot of polls are biased to reflect the opinion of the party commissioning the poll.
Or one could look at the odds in the betting market and even “punt” on this. Looking at the quotes (and the market seems to be quite liquid these days with more than 20 offers) tells us that people who actually bet money on this pretty much believe that the answer of the Brits will be”Stay”.
Issue 2: What will happen if the Brits vote for Brexit
Interestingly, many commentators seem to know exactly what will happen and that the only possible outcome is the way to doom, both for the UK and the EU. My own (shallow) research however tells me that there is high uncertainty within the second part of the question.
As far as I know, the UK and the EU would start negotiations at some point in time after the vote with the clear goal on UK side to keep everything what is good (market access etc.) and get rid of all the bad things (payments, refugees etc.) The EU on the other side will want to make sure that the deal for the UK doesn’t become too good so that not suddenly everyone wants to leave. Plus, countries like Germany or France still want to trade with the UK.
The outcome in my opinion is not clear. The UK already has already a special status (own currency, doesn’t pay its full dues etc.) so there could be clearly a lot of scenarios where there might be some “headline” changes like UK citizens have to use the Non-EU passport control booths but otherwise everything stays the same.
One could even argue that a potential Brexit has an overall positive impact. Why ? Well, it is pretty obvious that the current state of the EU is not very functional. Politicians (and Eurocrats) all argue for closer ties in order to tackle the problem. But is this really the solution ? Maybe the EU has gone already to far ? Economically most important in my opinion is free trade. Do we really need to have the same currency and an ultra strong central power in Brussels ?
One could look for instance at the different European nations and compare their systems. France for instance is very centrally organized, Germany on the other hand has a much more distributed system with a lot of regional delegation of power. I would argue that the decentralized system can have a lot of advantages and is often more resilient to crisis than a strong centrally run system.
Of course there are also possible future paths which would lead to really bad outcomes. Maybe France and the UK start to fight for the channel Islands again ? Who knows. But I think the important point is that what we hear in the press are opinions and possibilities but not facts or certainties.
Issue 3: What is already reflected in market prices ?
As I have outlined above, it is close to impossible to quantify the impact of a potential Brexit as no one knows for sure what will actually happen. So there is a lot of uncertainty in the market. On a personal level, especially institutional investors don’t want to get caught with their hand in their pants like our national coach Jogi Löw in the match against Ukraine:
As an institutional investor, you will have a lot of personal downside if you are overweight UK or GBP assets and something terrible happens. Even if you are equal weight and markets go down, your bosses will yell at you why you were such an idiot. So the rational thing is to underweight before and show “risk management skills”. You look like a hero if something bad happens but you will not be punished when markets will actually go up.
So I guess it is pretty likely that some of the potential negative consequences are already priced in. Just for fun I currently ask almost everyone about the pound: What will happen the day after a Brexit with the Pound ? 99% of the people I asked say: The pound will fall. When you ask why, then they become unsure and say “because it has to fall”.
However it is clearly almost impossible to know how much has been priced in already. Is a full Brexit already priced in or are investors currently assuming that the Uk will stay ? Hard to say.
So to sum it up:
- we do not know how the referendum will turn out
- we do not know what the actual impact of a Brexit will be
- we do not know what is priced in into current market prices
So it is pretty useless to make any predictions on what markets will do after a Brexit knows. No one knows. Period. Yes there could be a further stock market correction or Gold could go up, but that might have happened anyway.
So what to do now as a (Value) Investor:
That is easy: Just do nothing and relax
I own 4 UK listed stocks (Admiral, Lloyd’s, Aggreko, Ashmore) and one stock with significant UK exposure (Handelsbanken), in total ~20% of my portfolio. Should I sell them or hedge the pound ? I don’t think so.
Will people stop insuring their cars the day after a Brexit vote ? Will people sell their Emerging Market funds ? Will UK banks go bankrupt on Friday because they were betting all their capital on staying in the EU ? Will every house owner default in the next 2 years ? I do not know but I don’t think that is likely. What I do know is that all those companies have good (or very good) management who will work very hard to manage this risk and many other risks which could negatively impact their business.
If you actually feel like selling a UK stock because of the potential Brexit, you should sell it anyway, no matter what happens because your conviction is maybe a little bit on the low side.
Should one buy UK companies when their prices fall next Friday ? In my opinion only when you really know the company and know that it is undervalued. A falling stock price alone doesn’t tell you if the stock is good value.
I have one stock on my watch list (Old Mutual) and when it hits my limit I will buy.
Other than that I actually consider to take next Friday off and not even watch the market, as funny as it might be.
Edit:
I plan to do the same post in autumn, I will just replace “Brexit” with “Donald Trump US President” and replace my UK stocks with my US positions.
value and opportunity 
I think you have already read this news:
“Fifteen Lloyds Banking Group (LLOY.L) executives have bought almost a million of the lender’s shares in a post-referendum show of confidence in Britain’s economic prospects after the country voted to leave the European Union on Friday.”
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/lloyds-executives-buy-829-000-133454269.html
Let the bargain hunting begin 🙂
Yes – but no hurry in catching a falling knife…consensus that the FTSE 100 (UK sentiment indicator) has a lot of downward leg to go (to 5,00) and Soros has a bearish call on the GBP as well.
I am focused now on outward looking stocks with revenue and earnings in USD. List on the UK but core business is EM.
My two direct brokers do not work anyway 😉
Ha!
Will you add to Lloyd’s?
My one did. Hadn`t much Cash to trade this downsize but managed to made a good one i think. If you want to take a look at the company, i bought LEG111.
I finally managed to get some Money to work. Via the App of one of the Brokers.
As small Position in Lloyds and a new French small cap 😉
Buying more. LLoyds and Handelsbanken (small amounts, 0,25% of portfolio each)
Hi mmi,
Consors? It was realy slow today.
Looking forward to hear about the new French small cap!
Greetings
valuetradeblog
Pre-brexit analysis summary on lloyds:
http://invezz.com/news/equities/23512-Lloyds-share-price-Analysts-weigh-in-on-potential-Brexit-impact
Financials falling like a rock!
yes. No one knows what is going to happen. So let’s (short) sell banks…
Is the french small cap Microwave Vision? 😉
No, it is not.
Got to love the last paragraph in one bloomberg article on the topic.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-22/sleepless-in-the-city-lets-traders-bet-billions-on-brexit-result
Actually a good point for your favorite bank…
“” What can you do when your market is closed? Go on vacation. Joe Tracy, head of continental European equities at Svenska Handelsbanken AB in Stockholm, will leave Friday.
“My personal view is there will be a Brexit, but that day I will be starting my vacation on my way to New York,” said Tracy, who is in charge of all the bank’s Nordic equity sales to continental European clients. “In Sweden, the markets are closed. It’s the mid-summer’s eve party”. “”
I like !!!
Absolutely no impact, just noise
Well, I would say little impact, big noise. …..
mmi,
Another “end of the world” threat coercing voters to keep the status quo or increase central powers even more. In the past – EU, EURO, ECB money policy – it succeeded for the time being.
“This too shall pass”
Regards
milud
Thank you for a thoughtful post.
Completely agree about possible long-term positive consequences. Compared internationally with other countries, Britain’s population and political parties are some of the most supportive of free trade agreements. This is due to Britain’s merchant trading past and the memories of a disastrous nineteenth century policy to impose tariffs on grain, which was overturned by popular revolt (wikipedia: “Corn Laws”).
Therefore, even if British trade with the EU was lessened due to less favourable trading terms as the EU wanted to punish the UK, outside of the EU the UK would be keen to accelerate its trade deals across the world. The free trade argument for being part of the EU is that when conducting deals with other non-EU countries, one has the bigger bargaining power of 500million people. However, in practice. the need to satisfy each of the 27 EU countries means that trade deals are ridiculously slow to conduct. Bilateral negotiations are effective.
And yes, where is the great prosperity that the EU has brought to the European continent, that the markets are so keen to maintain? A look at the lines of the unemployed in job centres across Southern Europe will show you the very dangerous consequences of over-integration.
Aggree with most of you said. However I do think that doing bilateral trade deals will have negative economies of scale at some point in time for everyone. If the UK example would be adopted by all others and every European country would have to do bilaterall deals with everyone else (and each other), then we pretty soon have the old chaos. In that respect, I think the UK tries to do some “free riding” which only works if not everyone is doing it.
Great post, my thoughts are very similar. Brexit impact will likely be much smaller than people think, even though it is of great symbolic importance. Definitely nothing that should impact anyone’s’ investments.. This was an instant share on Twitter!
Looked at Microwave Vision last evening – I can’t find an angle on this one and ticks many “value trap” red flags…
I see that you are looking at it as well – what are your thoughts?
Tony
Thanks. Like you, I have the feeling that this discussion is very emotional.
I agree with your thoughts on “One could even argue that a potential Brexit has an overall positive impact”. To me it seems like our central planers use the “doom scenario” to convince people to vote for “remain” because they have no better arguments. Central structures falling apart are, of course, the nightmare of every central planer…
Switzerland is one of the more healthy countries in Europe and they are not part of the EU. A doom scenario is far from certain in the case of “leave”, although some ST distortions should be expected. In my opinion, that could result in some investment opportunities on the island for LT investors.
Relax,
Tom