Best Blogs of the Week (SPECIAL – BREXIT III – FINAL EDITION)
This will be the final issue related to Brexit. Less than one week later, the US equity markets (as measured by the S&P 500) returned to pre-Brexit levels. In fact the S&P 500 index is nearly at its 52-week high (off by 42 points, or 1%). In this issue, we’ll return to our standard format of highlight the best (Brexit) blog posts and not inventorying posts.
BlackRock – Where to find opportunities in a post-Brexit world – The big takeaway for those seeking to buy into market weakness: Be wary of buying notionally cheap assets that face challenges…
Franklin Templeton – Brexit: “I Have Confidence in Confidence Alone” – In my view, a real risk of political impasse and a lack of direction will be a further element of negative confidence.
Franklin Templeton – Brexit: Serious Consequences, but “Not the End of the World” – I expect financials and domestically oriented cyclical stocks to be the hardest-hit areas of the equity market within the United Kingdom and the EU
Invesco – Has the Brexit sell-off created an entry point? – These attributes give the Invesco International Companies Fund team a high degree of confidence in our belief that the UK will enjoy long-term economic success outside of the European Union.
Three quick learnings from following the industry’s BREXIT coverage.
- Many firms were caught flat-footed expecting a “Remain” vote and readying nothing substantive by the 23rd June. This reflected very poorly on these firms as their institutional and intermediary clients looked for a point of view and found nothing (or something highly superficial).
- Creating a cross-functional internal team (Sales, Marketing, PR) to create an execution plan for something that may not occur is simply not in the DNA for most asset managers. Teams are already resource-constrained and thus shifting 100 team hours from business as usual to a Brexit planning effort is a tough decision to make.
- The best Brexit blog posts provide a clear point of view. Messages such as “we’ll not panic” or “we encourage our advisors to plan for risk related to geo-political issues” were few and far between. Instead there was too much news regurgitation.
