Friends
Well, we knew this wasn’t going to be a pretty day for stocks, and it wasn’t. After opening down about 500 points on the Dow, stocks settled in for much of the trading session, but added another leg down in the last hour of trading. As we mentioned this morning, traders were front running the whole Brexit situation all week, which was very odd, so they were forced to give up those gains and then some today.
By the close, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 611 points to finish the day at 17,399. The S&P 500 was down 76 points to close at 2037. Not surprisingly gold was up $59 to trade at $1,322 per ounce, while oil was down $2.41 to trade at $47.70 per barrel WTI.
The consequences of the Brexit will be debated for days and months to come. It will be interesting to see if it has any effect on our political climate and the coming presidential election. Will it be a harbinger of things to come? I’m not going to go into all the details of the vote and the issues that prompted all this to happen in the UK. You can read about it online, and it would take up too much space in this email. Suffice it to say, that our political climate might not be that much different, and some who don’t respect the will and commitment of the people, might just be surprised in November.
After watching the Brexit vote unfold until about midnight last night, and today seemingly hearing every analyst in the world’s opinion on how all this is going to play out, it’s time to step back and remember an investment plan is for a lifetime, not two or three days or even weeks. No doubt, this was a strange week of trading. If we just had drifted into the vote, most likely today’s carnage would not have occurred, but we didn’t and those who stepped out in front of it this week got run over.
Well, as Jimmy Buffett sings- “we have a lot to drink about”.
Have a great weekend everyone.
