On the 23rd of June 2016 the UK decided to, by a slim majority (51.9%), to leave the EU.
Some six years later this comprehensive report looks back to analyse the impact.
The hit to business investment, as seen in this chart, is clear – “UK business investment fell by 0.1 per cent a quarter on average in the three years post-referendum, compared to growth of 1.7 per cent a quarter on average growth in the previous three years, and ongoing growth in other G7 countries.“
However, the universally held belief that trade with the EU would suffer, didn’t materialise. “The UK has now been trading under the terms of the TCA [Trade and Cooperation Agreement] for 18 months, and, although UK imports to the EU have fallen relative to the rest of the world, the share of goods exports to the EU remains at its pre-Brexit levels.“
You are reading text right now. It engulfs our lives.
“Between 1900 and 1990, the amount of time the average American spent reading and writing remained broadly consistent: somewhere between one and two hours a day.”
With the advent of the internet and text messaging – this more than doubled to four to five hours.
It is estimated the average internet user sees 490,000 words per day (more than War and Peace!).
As this wonderful contrarian article argues – this might not, as many argue, be all good.
“Every time we read, we inevitably conceptualize the world, in perhaps an ever-increasingly abstract way. And it’s conceivable that we may reach a point where those abstracting effects go too far.“
Article sourced from The Browser – a brilliant resource.
This deck has been doing the rounds the past few weeks.
It is actually a good description of market downturns and how they work.
Especially recommend looking from page 10 onwards – to understand the various stages (P/E reset, earnings revision) and slide 23 – what capitulation looks like.
Based on this feels we are still not there yet.
Interestingly they are also raising a structured equity fund.
Interesting article arguing that state capacity is the real constraint for delivering infrastructure projects, not interest rates.
“The new tunnels for New York’s East Side Access project cost about $4 billion per kilometer, while Paris built a similar project (infill development, went under the Seine, had problems with catacombs) for $230 million per kilometer. Copenhagen, Barcelona, Naples, and Milan were all cheaper still, while South Korea was generally the cheapest, with a tunneling cost around $100 million per kilometer, or perhaps less. That’s quite a difference in state capacity.“
It’s not just tunnelling – NYC spent $39m per station to add elevators, Boston $25m while in Berlin it cost just $2.6m.
