IG’s McCaig brings his crystal ball over on the red eye

The Irish branch of IG, the spread betting and financial trading firm, brought over Alastair McCaig, its top market analyst and media boffin, to Dublin yesterday for an event at its new office here, managed by Declan Bourke.

McCaig, according to his Twitter account, flew over on the “red eye” flight from London before dawn.

If his eyes were red beforehand, so were the eyes of the Dublin journalists, to whom he gave a 2016 markets outlook briefing, afterwards.

McCaig says it is going to be a year of major volatility. There goes the newsroom pension plan. . .

Oil, predicts McCaig, will hit new "low lows" of possibly close to $20 a barrel. That should cheer up poor old Aidan Heavey at Tullow Oil no end.

However, McCaig doesn’t envisage a rush by oil majors to pick off smaller explorers, such as Tullow, on the cheap. Every cloud has a silver lining.

On the prospects of a Brexit, McCaig pointed to an IG binary (a will it or won't it bet) that currently predicts a 68.5 per cent chance the United Kingdom will stay in the European Union after the referendum. So that's potentially good news for Ireland.

As for the woes of China, IG’s Mystic Meg says the volatility will continue there in the short term, especially when it comes to Chinese equities, whose bonkers undulations are spooking investors globally.

McCaig is due to give a talk to IG staff today, and another to its major Irish clients, before heading back to London this afternoon.

If his Irish-based colleagues took him out to Temple Bar, he may well be going back red-eyed for an altogether different reason.