What a weekend!
Giant stone tablets, Damascene conversions (Russell Brand’s “don’t vote – unless there’s an election!” moment), this election campaign contains more gimmicks than your average Happy Meal, but a lot less substance.
No wonder markets are finally starting to get twitchy.
The pound’s current twitchiness might just be the beginning
According to the FT, one-week sterling/US dollar implied volatility has jumped to 17.8%, its highest level since May 2010.
What that means is that traders are feeling more worried about fluctuations in the value of the pound than at any point since the aftermath of the last election.
As the FT puts it: “currency traders believe another indecisive outcome will trigger twitchiness in the foreign-exchange markets, as horse-trading to form a new government leaves a temporary political vacuum”.
For now, the three-month index is “considerably lower”. In other words, traders reckon we’ll get a burst of ups and downs, but then things will calm down as we get some sort of clarity on the next government.
However, that might be a rather optimistic take. As Richard Batley of Lombard Street Research notes: “Sterling volatility picked up sharply during the coalition negotiations that followed the 2010 election, and then subsided as they were quickly concluded”.
But the danger is that we won’t get a rapid conclusion. The concern this time around is that the election “is the harbinger of a new era of persistent political fragility. So less an explosion of risk than a debilitating background radiation of unpredictability”.
You can easily see how this might happen. If one thing seems likely, it’s that the winner of this election will need the support of at least one other party. Even if the existing coalition gets back in, this campaign leaves plenty of fault lines and exposed wounds – not to mention the jockeying for position to replace David Cameron as leader.
There’s the question of constitutional turmoil too. The Scottish National Party will be a significant presence. It may not have as much power as it hopes (it’s rather backed into a corner by its political inability to do any sort of deal with the Tories), but while another referendum may not be on the cards, the independence question is – sadly – hardly “settled for a generation”.
And you’ve got the EU referendum looming in 2017. The referendum itself is one thing – there are plenty of good reasons to have one, democracy being one of them. But the internal upheaval and distraction it will cause in terms of campaigning and rifts between and within parties could be disruptive to say the least.
You can see a scenario where Britain goes from being a comparatively stable developed economy with an attractive tax regime and political consistency, to being a much more uncertain home for anyone’s money.
“At its most extreme”, notes Batley, “this could start to challenge global investors’ choice of the UK as their main ‘European-but-not-euro-area’ safe haven”.
This could cause problems for any incoming government – particularly at a time when the global bond market looks wobbly.
Make sure you stay up to date
So what does all this mean for you as an investor? As we keep telling you, there are plenty of possible outcomes from this election.
One party could still end up getting a clear endorsement from the electorate; or it might all be so close and the result so disputed that we end up with another election before the end of the year.
And in between all that, there’s a rainbow of possibilities (though that makes it sound more attractive than it actually is), each with its own effect on the investment environment.
We have no idea who’ll win. But we do have an idea of what each outcome would mean for your money. And we’ll be keeping MoneyWeek readers bang up to date on the results as soon as the ballots are counted. So if you’ve not already joined us – maybe you’ve been thinking about it but haven’t quite made the leap yet – now’s the time to do it. You can find out more here.