Good morning!

Looks like we might get a bit of respite today, as the Futures are up overnight. What a terrible day yesterday - one of the worst I can remember in my c.20 years active investing. My portfolio took an absolute battering.

So what's going on? Well clearly it's more than just the immediate impact of the Brexit vote. The market is now actively pricing-in an economic downturn. This normally happens over months, at the end of the economic cycle. However, this time it seems to have happened in 2 days (or more, who knows?) - due to the catalyst of the (unexpected) Brexit vote.

It's been carnage for shares in housebuilders, banks, recruiters, real estate, retailers, and some other sectors. Plus we saw random, panic selling yesterday too.

Just to clarify, I'm not interested in the politics of Brexit in these reports per se. We've had the Referendum, and I accept the outcome. My only interest here is to try and work out what happens next, and how it's likely to affect the economy, and therefore share prices.

As investors, the whole concept of what we're doing is trying to predict the future. We buy shares that we think will be future stars (and hence go up in value). We sell shares if we think they're likely to go down. Different people have different timeframes & methods for this process. Essentially though, the concept of investing is all about trying to predict the future.

You can't do that without taking a view on the likely consequences of Brexit. You don't have to agree with my opinions, and I welcome a sensible debate in the comments section - but please no more endless repetition of all the pros & cons. We've done that to death already. Let's try to keep the discussion to what happens next, and how that might affect shares, sectors, etc.

Economic downturn?

It's looking increasing likely that we're now going into an economic downturn. Whether that turns into a recession (2 or more quarters of economic contraction), I don't know. At the moment, my thinking is that it's probably likely to be a fairly mild downturn, because interest rates are likely to remain at rock bottom. Also, the banks are now relatively well capitalised, so I don't currently see a risk of another credit crunch. As above, form your own view, this is just mine, and is subject to change of course,…

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