The Paris attacks and the shooting down of a Russian jet over Turkish airspace had little impact on the market.

It feels different now.

Frazzled markets feed political risk. The smell of market fear is amplifying every danger out there.

Trump, Syria Iran tensions, ISIS, migrant crisis, far-right election success.

That's why sterling is under attack.

With astonishing rapidity, Brexit has shot up the worry scale of investors.

The issue is all over the analyst community.

UBS notes the spike in Brexit mentions on Google since the start of 2016.

But are investors Brexit fixated just because EU referendum year has probably arrived?

The pound is down 6.4% in the last three months.

But the pace of the decline has quickened, because the new year has seen the market turn nasty.

Sterling is in investors' sights because market anxiety is turning them away from anything deemed risky.

The price of UK credit default swaps has shot up since January 1st.

Right now, Brexit makes the UK feel like a risky asset.

Now, that was far from the market's view last year.

As the pound drove on towards 1.60, and the bank of England turned hawkish on rates.

The maybe better reasons why sterling should fall.

The dominant issue of the UK's current account deficit, which is coming in at around 4.5% of GDP is one.

The bank of England's new dovish tone is another.

But political risk is the flavor of this sour month when it comes to bashing the pound.

It's wilting even before David Cameron has set a referendum date.

Sterling came under some pressure ahead of the 2014's Scottish referendum and the 2015 general election.

As we see here, there's the Scottish referendum impact and there is the election impact.

But the decline and the fall is nothing as big as it is at the moment and certainly, never this early.

Market turmoil is the reason for its decline, not the prospect of the UK leaving the EU,

serious though that may be.

If some market normality is restored, that may not stop that pound weakening further,

but it may put Brexit and sterling's real value in a better context

and make investors a bit more sanguine about political risk.