Good morning!
Thank goodness that Referendum Day has arrived. I don't know how much more of this we could take! It's certainly been causing me a lot of anxiety - constantly agonising over the best approach for mine & others' portfolios. I got very little sleep last night, worrying about this issue, and pondering what might happen if we get an out vote.
It's been neck & neck in the polls for some time now. Although my view has always been that a remain vote is very likely. The reason being that, on constitutional matters, the British public tend to be extremely conservative - at the last minute there tends to be a strong turn-out for the status quo. We saw that with the AV and Scottish referendums too (or is it referenda?).
On the other hand, out voters are extremely passionate, and a very high percentage are likely to turn out, so there's a chance of a big upset possibly.
Personally I found the out message very emotionally compelling. However, when you really think through what leaving the EU would entail - many years of disruption, even chaos, and certainly a recession in the short term, plummeting share prices, etc, is it really worth it? When very little would actually change in reality. UK politicians & civil servants simply don't have the capacity to re-write large sections of British law & regulations in a short space of time. So I think the status quo would probably be maintained in almost all areas. So what's the point then? To my mind, if you accept potentially dire consequences, then there has to be a massive prize at the end of it. I don't see that here at all. A leave vote strikes me as high risk, and low (possibly negative) reward. I wouldn't touch an investment like that.
I've also noted that the out campaign has attracted a lot of people one might describe as malcontents - generally unhappy with life, and so it's easiest to just blame immigrants. When in reality we have an army of hardworking, decent people from Eastern Europe here, doing jobs that often Brits won't do, for low wages. It's contributed to a housing crisis, sure. So let's build more houses!
Bottom line for me, I don't want to vote for something that is going to cost other people their jobs, as there will undoubtedly be job losses in some sectors -…
