With December already upon us, you might be thinking that you’ve missed the chance to benefit from trading this year’s major market moves by jumping on board during the aftermath. This year has provided so many attractive opportunities for traders to take advantage of massive directional movements from Equities, Indices, Currencies and Commodities, a clean sweep of financial markets. These spectacular movements create the ideal climate for investors to profit from the movement of markets in either direction: predicting the surprise and trading the aftershock.

Perfect examples of this were the Brexit and Trump sell-offs followed by spectacular rallies, whilst just this week crude oil prices rallied 16% in only two days as OPEC reached a historic production cut agreement two years after prices recently slid with markets not expecting a deal to be reached.

But 2016 isn’t over yet.

This weekend’s Italian referendum provides yet another once in a generation event to alter the European and global political landscape. The population of the Eurozone’s third largest economy will be going to the polls to decide whether they want to go through with PM Matteo Renzi’s constitutional reforms to reduce the size of the country’s government. However, having staked his position on this referendum, many voters are now seeing it as a vote on Renzi himself.

Before the polls ‘blacked out’ one week before the voting begins, the ‘No’ vote was leading.

Should this be the case, the likely implications would have much more of an impact than a ‘yes’ vote. The Italian banks, already seen as some of the most fragile in Europe, are in real danger of slipping into serious financial trouble. Without a stable government in place, the position non-performing loans held within the banking system and the proposed strengthening of the capital positions of Italy’s top banks will be thrown into doubt.

The reaction to this would be felt across Europe. It could be that UK banks will be some of the biggest winners/losers on the day dependent on which way the vote goes, with the Euro likely to see one of its busiest trading days against other currencies  since the Brexit vote back in June.

With the amount of surprises 2016 has managed to throw at markets, it’s only fitting that we’re set for one last pivotal event to see the year out.

Indices, stocks and currencies will all be be under the spotlight as the year closes with a bang. Stay up to date with the latest market reaction to the results of the referendum on Monday morning by signing up here to receive our research. You can be sure that the international press will be quoting our research throughout the day so why not hear what we have to say first!

Aymen Azizi, Trader, December 2