Over the past 20 years or so during which I have been writing my daily column, I have been asked innumerable times how I find something new to write about every day and whether I ever sit there with nothing to say. The answer is that there is always something interesting going on somewhere and often enough in corners of the world or in markets that the majority have not been focusing on.
The past week has been slightly different and market activity has been trading one and only one subject. Fact is, however, that we have all been plunged into darkness and traders and investors alike, in as much as they are active, are shooting from the hip. I wrote in my Monday comment that I had no idea where markets were going and now, on Wednesday, and despite yesterday’s healthy bounce in the price of risk assets I know no more than I did before.
Even a dead cat, it is said, will bounce if it is dropped from high enough and the ferocity of the sell down on Friday and Monday was calling for a technical reversal. So was yesterday’s rally just technical or was it an appreciation that the world as we know it didn’t end on the morning of June 24?
To be frank, I think it is far too early to pass judgement. Britain has no effective government, no opposition and a road map containing one line and no compass rose.
To hear the Muppet-in-Chief complaining that the Brexiteers have not put forward a plan of how they want to proceed is no more than one would expect from that pocket Napoleon. History isn’t exactly littered with “boil-in-the-bag” solutions to problems and how could anybody put forward concrete proposals without knowing the position of the negotiation partner. It seems that Brussels has no more of a clue how to deal with an Article 50 situation than does Westminster….and it is, after all, the former which wrote the rules. It is clear that neither side wants to make a mistake and therefore we are, for the while at least, going nowhere.
For centuries diplomacy has begun in discreet private meetings in which certain base positions and ground rules were established. Although it is being officially denied, I can’t imagine that some phone calls are not taking place.
Meanwhile, as far as markets are concerned, I would prefer not to resort to what used to be known as “elevator analysis” - up a bit, down a bit.
Therefore I shall for once admit that I have nothing meaningful to add to the situation, shall get in my car, go to London, work a bit, play a bit and leave markets to fiddle with themselves for a few days.
By the time I come back from the Big Smoke, I hope to have some answers to questions such as whether banks have to relocate in order to passport, whether a Dublin postbox might not suffice, how Scotland expects to find Brussels willing to cover its significant fiscal deficit in the unquestioning way Westminster has under the Barnett formula or why subsidiarity has been unceremoniously sacrificed on an altar constructed for no other purpose than to save the euro, one of the greatest vanity projects in human history.
Finally, before heading off to stand in the rain at Henley Royal Regatta, I’d like to thank the many of you who have written to me over the past few days thanking me for my thoughts on the subject of the impending exit from the European Union by this still United Kingdom. More than just two or three have suggested that the Monday column might have been the best I have ever written. You might think so; I couldn’t possibly comment.