Brexit
Find out what Brexit could mean for the markets and how a hard or a soft exit from the EU could affect traders.
On Thursday 18 October, we invited two forex experts into the IG studio for the second #IGForexChat. With the UK due to formally leave the EU on 29 March 2019, Sara Walker sat down with economist Simon French and market analyst Nicholas Cawley to discuss how the Brexit negotiations could affect the markets, and how a hard or soft exit from the EU could affect traders.
Simon French: It looks likely that we’ll get a deal by the fourth quarter (Q4) of the year. But it’s unlikely to happen by the end of November. Anybody who studies the history of the EU negotiations will know that these negotiations invariably go down to the wire. It may even slip over to January.
Nicholas Cawley: I’m not as positive as I was a few weeks ago. Everything that we get out of these meetings is often the same. It always seems to be the EU saying to the UK that something is not right, and then they must go back and fix it. There will come a stage where there will be a face-off and one side will have to move. From a trading point of view, nothing points to the fact that ‘a person should be buying sterling because something’s going to happen’.
SF: The easiest 85% has been agreed, the hardest 15% hasn’t been agreed – delicate factors such as the timing of the transition, the nature of the backstop agreement, as well as the political calculus to go alongside the economic incentives of making a deal. One thing we haven’t yet mentioned is that the EU must carefully consider how much they can give without it being perceived – within the 27 remaining states – that the UK has managed to leave easily and without paying. But they also don’t want to push it too far, because that may lead to an accidental no-deal Brexit.
NC: At the moment, I see no reason to buy the pound. A lot of people think that we may get a rebound when there’s an announcement, but that may take some time. And then Theresa May has to sell it back to the UK parliament. Everything is so fractured there that it's not going to be an easy process. So, I think all the pressure on sterling is on the downside. There’s no reason to hold sterling assets as a trading vehicle, especially with the strength of the US dollar.
If you’d like to find out more about the potential ramifications of Brexit negotiations on forex markets, watch the full interview or choose an area that interests you:
Find out what Brexit could mean for the markets and how a hard or a soft exit from the EU could affect traders.
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