Those words were how one City trader was overheard explaining the resignation of Greek finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, as he chatted on the phone in early trading, following Sunday’s referendum.
It represented what was a brief hum of excitement in the City as the markets opened on Monday morning, for the first time since the Hellenic Republic voted no. Like eurozone officials, the Square Mile had been expecting that last week’s taster of capital controls would spook the country into a yes vote in the country’s austerity referendum, and financial spread-betting firm IG Group last week priced a no vote as having only a 40% chance.
So what now? Monday morning’s initial dips in the value of the euro and the world’s stock markets have been swiftly reversed – the euro is now down less than 1% against the dollar, while the FTSE is off by even less – as investors quickly started to buy again in the hope of a deal.
Chris Beauchamp, a market analyst at IG, said: “[Stock markets] opened down but are surging back - much like they did last Monday and much like the euro is doing. The markets are coming back on Varoufakis’s resignation - possibly more in hope than expectation, but if you take out the most irritating man in the room then you might get a more reasonable response from Germany and France.”
That could happen but, the City will also admit, so could almost anything else. Despite Greece being the world’s biggest financial story since the last time Greece was the world’s biggest financial story, there was surprisingly little activity in the equity markets, where volumes remained stubbornly low. The explanation from the trading floors was that this was because the City doesn’t like uncertainty (or turning up for work during the summer), while nobody really seems to know what is going to happen next.
IG’s Alastair McCaig added: “Ask politicians what is happening with Greece and they say, ‘I don’t know’. Markets are the same. Greece has surprised at every opportunity. Last week they surprised by calling a referendum. This week they surprised by voting no. They have the propensity to surprise again.”
Still, there are some in the City with unequivocal views about how they believe this will all play out – and if you desire a firm prediction, intertwined with multilingual wordplay, then you need some French analysis.
Simon French, that is, the chief economist at stockbroker Panmure Gordon, who is heroically eschewing his profession’s love of fence-sitting and prices the chances of a Grexit at 100%. Or, as the economist drolly puts it, it’s a “feta-ccompli”.
