George Soros Was ‘Long’ on Pound Before Vote on Brexit

It makes sense that people were curious about his pound position, given his history. But we haven't got the knowledge needed to compare his massive public outright pound bet to his pre-Brexit referendum positioning.

The risk we are talking here is risk according to the modern portfolio theory. It's the variance of a portfolio. Index funds spread the risk across multiple stocks, to reduce variance. Stock markets have overall greater variance than bonds, so the risk of index funds is is higher than bonds.

The risk decreases with time. This is why you should see index funds as long term investment. In 10-15 year time period total return of index funds is relatively low risk.

There are other risks in all financial investments. Variance is not the only one.

With a long enough investment horizon however, being invested in the entire US stock market has historically worked out very well, and should hopefully continue to do so in the future barring very extreme destabilizing world events. You should get growth that you cannot achieve with bonds.

So it all depends on your time horizon (e.g. longer than an economic cycle) and risk appetite (appreciation vs. maintaining principal).

If you are invested in an index fund and the market nose dives for 20 months you don't have the luxury to wait until it recovers. You are forced to sell at 30-40-50% lower values while the slump lasts. This translates to burning through your nest egg at 1XX% the rate you 'normally' would for the duration of the slump.

I'm not sure why you think that comment is propaganda. Catastrophic things do happen sometimes.

His attachment to the EU is partly based on his belief that we are too sanguine about Europe's recent past being exceptional and non-repeatable. I don't think this is entirely unreasonable. Some commentators in the 1910's possessed a similar optimism.

If the purpose of the union was peace then one can surmise that disintegration of the union will almost certainly lead to a greater probability of conflict. It might take another 50 years but that's often the case with incendiary points in history sparking raging fires many decades down the line.

The EU does have a lot on its plate but in addition to domestic problems it has an unstable Ukraine, Russia eyeing any opportunity to bag a warm water shoreline and on top of that Islamic extremism leading to increasing tension inside and outside Europe.

The UK was able to negotiate such advantageous terms with the EU not because of European largesse but because of the many benefits the UK brought to Europe.

I can't predict who will suffer more from this, the UK or EU but I very much doubt that the majority of Europeans are glad to see the back of us.

One man's turn-off is another man's turn-on. A lot of traditional issues for European left and green movements were enshrined into EU law, and there is no appetite whatsoever to abandon them.

There are clear grievances towards the Euro asset and the (relatively recent) neoliberal bend that economic policies have taken at Union level, but nothing that can't be fixed -- especially if German governments start being a bit more cooperative.

In fact, this is the real rubber between UK and most other European governments: for the UK, the Union has always been primarily about the market, whereas others embraced the federalist project with more conviction. Some of them stuck to the overall federalist projects even while rejecting the common currency, which is arguably its cornerstone. The problem for the EU is fixing its economic policies, not its social ones.

> It seems like they were getting the least out of the deal.

That's very ironic, considering how the UK was getting probably the best deal compared to all major countries: free trade, no Euro (which also means no oversight from ECB, despite all scaremongering to the contrary), very little net cost because of the special rebate, and a privileged position at the intersection of financial flows from Asia, US and Europe. Regardless of what departing agreement we can get, the country will never get anything as good as that.

edit:

The ECHR is not an EU institutions. In fact, the UK will likely remain in that no matter what.

The FRA is basically an advisory body...

I honestly don't know what problem you might have with the charter, unless you plan on torturing or being tortured: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charter_of_Fundamental_Rights_...

The ECJ is necessary even just as an arbitration court, so again, not sure what your grievance is.

Interesting (and troubling) times lie ahead...