How They Got It So Wrong. Complacent Traders Stunned by Brexit
- Betting odds had put “Remain” probability at 90 percent
- “It’s impossible to describe this bloodbath” in the markets
Steven Major: Brexit About Something Bigger than U.K., EU
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Simon Quijano-Evans has made a career of assessing the potential for instability in far-flung corners of the globe. On Friday, the chief emerging-markets strategist at Commerzbank AG in London woke to find some of the deepest financial peril he’d ever seen on the streets just outside his office.
“As an emerging-markets analyst I have been listening to all this talk of risk in emerging markets, but the incalculable risk was right here at the EU’s door,” said Quijano-Evans, one of the few analysts to downgrade bonds of east European countries on concern over Britain’s vote on membership in the EU. “Everyone is in shock; the market was very wrong.”