Friday, December 1, 2017

Political Risk Exaggerated on Catexit

On the day the Catalan parliament voted in favor of “Catexit” from Spain, the IBEX-35 stock-market index dropped 1.4 percent while the Stoxx Europe 600 gained 0.3 percent.[1] The IBEX-35 is an stock-index of companies based in Spain. Investors also sold state bonds; yields on 10-year bonds rose to 1.574% from 1.558. Even though these changes were hardly earth-shattering in magnitude, their directionality points to investor-anxiety. I submit that it was overblown, which suggests that investors generally tend to over-react to political events.

The full essay is at "Catexit: Political Risk."

[1] Jon Sindreu, “Stocks, Bonds Hit by Political Unrest,” The Wall Street Journal, October 28-29, 2017.