Thursday, June 23, 2016

As the Brexit vote takes place today, where the British populace decides on a referendum whether or not Great Britain should remain part of the European Union (EU) or not, new polling released this morning is helping part the clouds for U.S. investors that a British exit — “Brexit” — won’t be taking place.

Thus, we’re seeing futures up ahead of the bell this morning. The Dow 30 futures are up more than 160 points as of this writing. Nasdaq futures are up another 40, and S&P 500 up nearly 20. More directly related to the Brexit vote, the British pound has gained more than 1 percentage point this morning, as has the FTSE and the German DAX.

Here at home, weekly Jobless Claims came in with a big improvement at 259K, a drop of 18K from the unchanged 277K last week. That figure a week ago, however, looks to have been an outlier — 259K is much more inline with the jobless claims figures we have been seeing for the past few months. More importantly, we now see Jobless Claims at low levels we haven’t seen since Richard Nixon was president.

Anyhow, with 3 to 1 odds that Brexit will not wind up being a reality, that’s still a 1 in 3 chance it will. (What sort of odds did YOU give the Cleveland Cavaliers to beat Golden State this year?) So if we wind up seeing a big upset overnight, expect big tremors rumbling through the market by this time tomorrow. Until then, “Pip pip, and cheerio!”

Mark Vickery
Senior Editor