You might buy new pounds as "secure" coins, but you'll probably some percentage of their value the next day...
On one hand finally getting clarity might be good news in that some people who have held back might spend more once the uncertainty of the immediate reaction is out of the way. On the other hand for a lot of people it makes things definite and will cause more cautious spending patterns, and there's still plenty of other uncertainty.
It also starts the clock, which will make people speculate about the timing.
I haven't the faintest clue how that will make traders respond. What I do know is that because I don't have the faintest clue how it will make people respond, I'm acting accordingly cautiously, and have cut my spending considerably since the referendum, and I know many others in the same situation, and indeed the UK has a whole has seen consumer debt levels drop substantially.
All this to say that it is foolish to assume that it boils down to whether or not the actual event itself is expected or not.
thankfully you aren't the majority; we really would have had a recession if everyone had cut their spending
I for one thinks that recession or not, a lot of people are setting themselves up for major pain once interest rates start moving up again and would be best served by doing what they can to cut down on spending.
At the moments large parts of the handling of the UK economy appears to be based on trying to push problems ahead of us in the hope that things will start looking rosier some day. Instead it's looking scarier and scarier.
[1] https://www.retailgazette.co.uk/blog/2017/02/consumer-spendi...
[2] http://myinforms.com/en-gb/a/184905009-consumer-spending-gro...
[3] https://sputniknews.com/business/201701201049832161-uk-retai...
brexit itself doesn't change the fact there's a short term business cycle driven by credit and low interest rates
> At the moments large parts of the handling of the UK economy appears to be based on trying to push problems ahead of us in the hope that things will start looking rosier some day.
capitalism is based entirely on eternal exponential growth, which is clearly not sustainable, there's nothing UK specific about this
Consumer demand and confidence largely comes from how safe people feel in their jobs and whether or not they get raises, not statistics. I'm sure there's some feedback, but my own cautious spending is a direct result of knowing of direct threats to a substantial number of jobs, and seeing the consequences of e.g. potential clients pulling back on spending. I'm not very worried about my own income, but the only reason I'm not very worried is that my disposable income is high enough that I can sustain drops without being affected much.
Meanwhile e.g. my ex. has to deal with knowing that hundreds of jobs where she works will be cut (and no, that's not rumours - she works in HR and has direct knowledge of the plans) as a consequence of Brexit. If the negotiations goes badly, it will be several times that.
That is the kind of things that's causing consumer confidence to soften.
> brexit itself doesn't change the fact there's a short term business cycle driven by credit and low interest rates
No, but it has directly affected that starting to come to and end because of softening consumer confidence.
> capitalism is based entirely on eternal exponential growth, which is clearly not sustainable, there's nothing UK specific about this
No, but there is something UK specific about currently being in a situation where the government has chosen to drastically cut public spending at a time when low salary growth has left people using low credit as a means to keep the party going, and are then suddenly hit by events that cause a great deal of uncertainty over their ability to continue to service debt.