Identifying safe haven assets for equity investors through an analysis of the stability of shock transmission

Our analysis takes the perspective of an equity fund manager who seeks a potential safe haven asset to protect her portfolio during market downturns. We employ a regime-switching framework, within which we separate common and idiosyncratic shocks, to assess the suitability of gold, 10-year and 1-year U.S. Treasury bonds. We find evidence in favour of choosing either gold or the longer-dated bond as our safe haven asset. Both deliver risk reduction benefits as equity markets plunge. In contrast, the 1-year bond is not suitable as its vulnerability to contagious idiosyncratic shocks more than offsets its ability to hedge against common risk factors.