First, the plain facts unattractive as they are. The unaudited NAV of Athelney Trust fell by 6% in June which was markedly worse than the various indices that I track. The FTSE Small Cap fell by 2.7%, the Fledgling by 2.6% and the AIM All-share by 4.1%. The result would have been even worse but for take-over bids which arrived for Wireless Group (+73.2%) and Premier Farnell (+41%). There were some really bad performers such as Trinity Mirror and Matchtech but most of the problems surfaced in the property sector post the referendum.

Retail investors have panicked and rushed to sell their holdings in open-ended commercial property funds. Standard Life, Aviva, M&G and Henderson, having run through their liquidity (which apparently varied from about 15% to 25%) have now shut the gate and said that investors will only be paid out when orderly disposals of the underlying properties have been made. Buyers will see these funds coming and will bid low for the properties that they like – this will give the property valuers the opportunity to call these transactions willing buyer/ willing seller, which they are not.

Nevertheless, expect sharp mark-downs in asset values in the near future. As you can imagine, this has spooked the property market right across the board. Going back to the open-ended funds again, that liquidity was often held in REITs shares because of exceptionally low interest rates – naturally, all these shares have now been sold in the stock-market, thus depressing prices even further. Selling has continued into July so expect more shocks of this type. Having said all that, I am determined not to join the Gaderine swine by selling our property shares. They will be reviewed one by one and, if any are wanting, they will be replaced by better choices but do not expect the substantial commitment to the sector to fall by much, if anything, first and foremost, they are great dividend payers (expect quite a few cuts in FTSE 100 divvies) and, second, there is virtually nothing in the overheated London commercial and residential markets. As for the referendum, I think that it was a disaster in both political and economic terms: I do not believe that the country has been in such a dreadful state since the aftermath of Suez.

No doubt I shall be returning to the subject in the coming months but now we can see that HM Treasury was right in forecasting a recession, falling house prices, no investment in plant and equipment, reduced consumer confidence, rising unemployment and so on and so on.