Illustration of a man with a newspaper over his face chasing butterflies with a net, one butterfly's body is an upwards facing arrow, the other is a downwards facing one

Illustration: Satoshi Kambayashi

Jun 23rd 2026|4 min read

How much would you have paid ten years ago, as votes were counted for Britain’s Brexit referendum, to glimpse the next morning’s headlines and trade ahead of them? If you were betting on the pound, it would have helped a lot. The night of the poll £1 bought $1.50; a fortnight later, less than $1.30. But if you were trading stocks, a forewarning may have done more harm than good. Britain’s domestically focused FTSE 250 share index dropped at first, but only for two trading days. Then it began a bull market that lasted for a couple of years. Even the most fervent Brexiteer might not have predicted that.

Large commercial vessels and a small boat navigate the waters off the southern port city of Bandar Abbas, Iran.

Why macro trading is hard