There has been a dramatic fall in the value of the pound as traders bet the United Kingdom will exit the European Union.
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Sterling had hit 1.50 dollars shortly after polls closed at 10pm on Thursday, but as Leave votes flooded in in increasing numbers the strength of sterling plummeted.
Traders are gearing up for a huge plunge in stock market values when the FTSE opens at 8am this morning with United Kingdom stock futures pointing to a very steep fall in the value of Britain’s biggest companies.
Joe Rundle, head of trading at ETX Capital, described the win for Leave as “one of the biggest market shocks of all time”.
Sterling fell as low as $1.3305, its weakest level against the dollar since September 1985, before recovering some ground to $1.3880.
But sterling was still down more than 6 percent against the dollar by mid-morning in London, its biggest fall since the system of free-floating exchange rates was introduced in the early 1970s.
“The pound fell a long way very quickly and the talk was that the speculative guys sold it on the first results last night and then bought it back”, said Richard Benson, co-head of portfolio management at currency fund Millennium Global.
According to the BBC forecasts Leave has won the referendum and the United Kingdom will quit the European Union.
These two votes countered an earlier national opinion poll from YouGov that suggested Britons have voted to keep the country in the European Union by a 52-28 percent margin.
However, a significant percentage (16.85 per cent) of those who fell into the “Don’t Know” category in the study last month were expected to hold the key to the results.
Maurice Pratt, Chairperson of European Movement Ireland said, “While European Movement (EM) Ireland never advocated how people should vote in yesterday’s referendum, we never shied away from our belief that an EU without the UK as a member would be a poorer one with many as yet unknown consequences for both the UK, Ireland and the EU itself”.
Banks had warned clients about volatile trading conditions around the results which may lead to large gaps in prices.
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But while the country decides how to move forward, here’s how some from the football world have reacted to the news.
