'Uncertainty' offers opportunity

‘Buy when the cannons are firing and sell when the trumpets are blowing’, Nathan Rothschild apparently said in 1810 as the Napoleonic Wars rumbled on and, while there haven’t been too many cannons fired lately, there are plenty of bombs being lobbed by the world’s political elite (and not so elite). In the UK, Thursday’s ‘Brexit’ referendum has got Desperate Dave and Bumbling Boris chucking pies at each other just as they presumably did many years ago at Bullingdon Club dinners; in the US we have the remote (surely?) possibility of a Trump presidency; and on our own shores we apparently have another election, although everyone’s too tired of politicians to listen to a word any of them are saying. It all makes for a lot of what market commentators call ‘uncertainty’: the isolationist potential of a Trump presidency; the destabilizing effect of the UK leaving the EU, potentially prompting others to do likewise; the risk of all this exacerbating the low growth around the world. Read more