Friday's somewhat surprising Brexit vote (given that the polls showed both sides neck in neck, I cannot agree with the media that a 52-48 vote was a "shock") reminds me a lot of the financial market turmoil that was brought on by Greece's tumult several years ago. The fear was always about a European contagion rather than a huge impact from the main event. As I reminded people back then, Greece is roughly the size of Ohio and therefore we could extrapolate its ultimate impact on the rest of the world to have its limits. The U.K. is definitely larger in population than Greece (about the size of California and Texas combined), but it remains a small sliver of the globe.
As was the case then, the Brexit vote is going to have its biggest impact locally as the U.K. tries to figure out exactly what it means and how to tread slowly in order to minimize economic disruption. Companies doing business in Europe will have to contemplate their next steps, but by and large it should be business as usual for most players in the region. The stock market reaction has been interesting because one can point to obvious losers where substantial market devaluations seem warranted (U.K. banks, for instance), but also many that seem to be painted with the guilt by association brush. Anheuser Busch InBev (based in Belgium) and Shire (based in Ireland) each fell by 5-10% on Friday despite the fact that sales of beer and pharmaceuticals should be unaffected (in fact, perhaps alcohol consumption in the region sees a tick upwards in coming months). Those types of investment scenarios might be ripe for picking.
Other areas are worth watching too. U.S. commercial and investment banks are actually very healthy these days after taking dramatic capital raising measures post-housing crisis. If one was looking for a chance to buy well-run firms such as JP Morgan or Goldman Sachs on sale, the current drops might look quite appealing. For those brave souls who want to scour the U.K. for riskier options (not a task I plan on undertaking, simply due to my lack of knowledge of the region), there will not be a shortage of opportunities to ponder. After all, British Telecom has lost 25% of its value over the last two days, despite operating a business traditionally seen as fairly defensive in nature. A bank it is not.
With the U.S. market only down about 6% from its all-time high, I think it is too early to be either overly worried or overly eager to gobble up stock bargains. Consider that the crash of 1987 was a 500 point decline that equated to 23% of the market's value. Friday's 600 point drop was a little more than 3%.