| By Victor Hill
Gosh. Have I missed something? I hate it when Swen prods me like that when I'm fast asleep in my favourite comfy chair. Did you say we've voted out? Told you so. It was when I was having lunch with Evil about a month ago that I started getting vibes. We discussed the bookies odds on Brexit and the general consensus around the table was that the odds were sound. Do the bookies ever get it wrong, I asked? Evil gave me one of his withering Captain Mainwaring looks. Stupid boy. But it was over the last week that I felt there was a real disconnect between what I was hearing on the ground and what the barrow boys were doing in the dealing rooms. During the week of 13 June there was a perceptible shift towards Brexit in the opinion polls. Then, on 16 June came the ghastly and senseless murder of Jo Cox MP. The polls moved back to REMAIN. Take a look at the chart of USD/GBP in the week that followed. Meanwhile, I continued chatting with kindly strangers – and conceived the pronounced impression that, outside the fleshpots of London, there was a mood abroad. I definitely sensed that the FX market euphoria was overdone. Did I ever mention that all the major banks' risk models went into melt-down in 2008? When financial institutions call an outcome wrongly, they get it badly wrong. On Tuesday this week I tried to warn readers of these pages that the precipitous rise in the Pound against the Dollar could not be justified by mere opinion polls. As usual, sentiment has its own feedback loops. When the Pound continued rising in the US after the markets closed in London on Thursday evening – to just shy of US$1.50 – I knew something was up. I even posted on Facebook something to the effect that either the guys in red braces knew something we didn't know or they were overbought... Click Here To Read The Full Story The Master Investor Market Report - The FTSE 100 closed the day at 6,162.97, a decrease of 175.13 points.
- The FTSE 250 fell 1,245.46 points to finish at 16,088.05.
- The FTSE All Share dropped 122.49 points to finish at 3,359.25.
- The FTSE AIM All Share finished at 704.12, down by 22.80 points.
The FTSE 100 outperformed indices elsewhere, which also moved substantially. The Nikkei 225 closed down by 1,286.33 points at 14,952.02, the CAC 40 dropped 359.17 points to 4,106.73, the IBEX 35 fell 1,097.60 points to 7,787.70 and the XETRA DAX declined by 699.87 points to 9,557.16. Sterling fell sharply against the US Dollar after it became clear that the final tally would favour the Leave camp. The Pound dropped to $1.3305 before recovering somewhat, but HSBC now forecast that it may hit $1.20 by the end of the year. The Pound was trading at $1.3639 at time of writing. There were also falls against other currencies, but most of these were less severe, such as the 6% drop relative to the Euro. Shares in major financial institutions also suffered with Barclays and Lloyds down by 17.68% and 21.00% at the London close and Deutsche Bank and BNP Paribas dropping 14.13% and 17.40% on the continent. These impacts were also felt at insurer Aviva (AV.) whose shares plunged by 15.68% to 374.80p despite its issuing a statement reassuring investors that the company expects there to be no significant operational impact from today's developments. The company's European subsidiaries are locally incorporated and regulated, and management believe that the company holds sufficient capital to survive a period of market stress. | 
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