EU referendum: Confidence among private investors holds up ahead of vote
Confidence among private investors edged up this month, despite widespread talk of unprecedented market volatility in the run-up to the EU referendum.
A poll of more than 1,000 UK investors for the Lloyds Bank investor sentiment index showed the outlook towards most types of assets had improved slightly over the last few weeks, but is still considerably down on this time last year.
The overall net sentiment score – a measure of how many more people felt positive compared to negative – grew from 2.6 per cent to 4.6 per cent between May and June.
The report, released today, tracks the outlook of private investors to shares around the world, UK government bonds, UK property and commodities.
Read more: We asked 12 experts what the FTSE 100 and sterling will do the day before the referendum?
Confidence was still in positive territory towards UK shares, despite the upcoming vote and big swings on the FTSE 100 – coming in at 6.4 per cent. That was up on 4.9 per cent in May, though compares less favourably to the 40 per cent score recorded in June 2015.
As a sign that uncertainty before the vote is weighing on investors' decision-taking, however, sentiment towards gold jumped by the highest of any category over the month rising from 30 per cent to 38 per cent. Separate figures released by the Royal Mint this morning showed transactions in gold bullion have increased by one-third in the past few weeks.