Brexit Stock Market Perspective

by Levi Russell

The financial press was abuzz before and after the recent UK referendum to leave the European Union (see here, here, here, here, here, and here). To be sure, the British Pound took a big hit and several stock market indices across the Western world were affected. I'd just chalk this up to political uncertainty, not a referendum on the referendum. After all, we don't actually know if the UK will leave the EU. Perhaps I'm biased.

Here's the perspective I promised in the title. First, a look at the 5-day charts (all taken from Yahoo Finance) of U.S. (Dow and S&P 500), British (FTSE), Spanish (IBEX), German (DAX), and French (CAC 40) stock exchange indices:

To be sure, these are some pretty serious one-day drops. However, the Dow and S&P 500 fell more modestly than the others and the FTSE (British index) has recovered somewhat. The hardest hit so far are the European indices. Interesting, to be sure.

But what does this selloff look like over a 1 year time horizon? How far back in time do we have to go to see these indices at similar levels?

The Dow and S&P 500 are right about where they were last month. If you take out the big troughs in September 2015 and early this year, both indices are pretty much flat. The FTSE looks similar, though it seems to have a bit more of a downward trend than the U.S. The Spanish, German, and French indices are down a bit more relative to the past few months but it seems they're just continuing a downward trend that's been around for the past 12 months.

I'm not saying the referendum had no effect on the markets but after looking at these charts I'm left asking "Where's the fire?" Maybe I'm missing something, or maybe my cavalier attitude to the stock market stems from the fact that I'm 29 years old.