That’s a Scottish saying of “Whatever is meant to happen to you, will happen to you” or roughly “what will be, will be”.

We can safely say that the market is panicking over the Scottish vote next week, and of course that’s mainly been driven by our wonderful press and their penchant for stirring up the masses with their headlines.

There also seems to be a great many commentators outside of the UK thinking that this is going to be a bigger deal than it actually is. Anyone would have thought that Scotland leaving the UK is akin to Spain, Italy or France leaving the Eurozone. It’s madness I tell ye.

I personally think the whole thing is overdone. There’s not many people in England who actually give two hoots what happens, me included. The Scots are a hard headed bunch and they will make whatever decision they think is best for them, but don’t be expecting the UK to actually go into meltdown if that happens.

As usual there’s threats and counter threats and if you want a gauge of the actual damage level you can probably take all the threats at 20% of their face value. Will Scotland renege on £143bn of debt? No chance! Not if they want to ever go out into the market to seek financing and pay reasonable rates. The most that will probably happen is that some form of restructuring will be done.

Will they be cast out into a currency wilderness? I doubt that too and if they do they will likely peg their new currency to the pound anyway.

Will the UK suffer from loss of oil revenues? Probably not as most of the companies running rigs are domiciled in England and some sort of compromise deal will be knocked together.

All this talk of new border controls and and loss of business, and huge flows out of the UK are just scaremongering. Not wishing to be demeaning to Scotland, but for the UK it will be like losing a finger, not a whole arm. Life will go on and it will be the Scots that will potentially have the hard time in finding their feet on their own.

Politically, I personally don’t think that either side have thought things through properly and last minute, cobbled together plans by both sides trying to swing the vote just muddy the waters even more. The whole thing looks to be a mess and that’s not going to help the Scots in anyway. If they really want out then at the moment there doesn’t seem to be a real plan and that’s something they should be worried about. But that’s politics for you. Win first, think of a plan second.

And so the conversation turns to trading. I’ve said I think it’s all overdone but I’m happy to let the market scream and shout and make extreme moves. I said last week that I wasn’t ready to buy and that I didn’t feel the moves were finished and here we are 500 odd pips lower. While there’s a lot of Scotland in these moves there are other things to consider. The UK slowdown this half is casting a shadow and the pick up in the US and rate expectations are having a big say too. We’re down over 1000 pips, just like the euro and given the difference between the UK and Europe right now that seems excessive.

With 10 days to go until the actual vote I can see much more uncertainty coming in and the pound being adversely affected. I’m not willing to sell it and when I look to buy it properly it will initially be more of a gut feel trade that the moves have gone stupidly out of control. I’m still eyeing the 1.60 level on a technical basis but will let the news drive my trading. I took a small long last night on the gap down, which I’ve offloaded half for 50 pips profit so far, and I’m happy to keep the other half.

This is one of those situations where the fundamentals seriously outweigh the tech and so be careful trying to catch that falling knife. With so long to go until the vote there this could reach fever pitch quite soon and the UK press will be front and centre and driving the market.

For pound traders the only real grounded question worth asking is “Will the UK implode if Scotland leaves?”

Will the UK fall into a fiery abyss if Scotland votes to leave?

IT BURNS! IT BURNS!

Scotland who?