(Bloomberg) Hours after Britain’s decision to leave the European Union sparked mayhem across global financial markets, a handful of prescient investors began to emerge as big winners. Hedge fund manager Crispin Odey, an advocate of a British exit, gained more than 15 percent in his flagship fund. Several hedge funds that use computers to follow trends, including David Harding’s Winton Capital Management, also reported gains. Shares of a Canadian insurer that was betting on deflation rallied.
They were among the few — or, at least, the known few — who profited as the pound plunged to the lowest since 1985, global stocks tumbled and bonds and gold rallied. George Soros, the billionaire who forged his reputation by making a billion-dollar score in a 1992 bet that the U.K. would devalue the pound, had warned Britons days before the vote that they were underestimating the true cost of a Brexit and that the only winners would be speculative forces seeking to exploit such a decision.
