Abstract
During recent years the world has witnessed several unprecedented crises that affected the international financial markets. Indeed, the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia–Ukraine conflict caused major perturbations that slowed down the economic and financial development around the globe. International investors are switching their attention to more reliable assets as a refuge to their portfolios. This paper investigates the hedge and safe haven properties of gold and major cryptocurrencies, mainly Bitcoin and Ethereum. Empirical analysis is conducted on main fiat currencies using the multivariate asymmetric dynamical conditional correlation model. Results show that gold has a superior hedging effectiveness compared to cryptocurrencies. Moreover, the precious metal and the digital currencies are safe havens for almost all fiat currencies.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
The estimation of the A-DCC model is performed using the R project for statistical computing with the rugarch package for univariate GARCH-type models, and rmgarch package for the multivariate correlation model. The software and packages are available from https://cran.r-project.org/.
The method proposed by Baur & McDermott (2010, p. 1893) includes a time varying coefficient \(b_t\) to estimate from the regression. However, Ratner and Chiu (2013) improved this method by substituting \(b_t\) with the pairwise dynamic conditional correlation \(ADCC_{ij,t}\) estimated from a multivariate GARCH model.
I could not extend the sample prior to 2016 due to the limited availability of Ethereum data.
References
Akhtaruzzaman, M., Boubaker, S., Lucey, B. M., & Sensoy, A. (2021). Is gold a hedge or safe-haven asset in the COVID-19 crisis? Economic Modelling, 102(105), 588. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econmod.2021.105588
Arouri, M. E. H., Lahiani, A., & Nguyen, D. K. (2015). World gold prices and stock returns in China: Insights for hedging and diversification strategies. Economic Modelling, 44, 273–282. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econmod.2014.10.030
Baker, S. R., Bloom, N., Davis, S. J., Kost, K., Sammon, M., & Viratyosin, T. (2020). The unprecedented stock market reaction to COVID-19. The Review of Asset Pricing Studies, 10(4), 742–758. https://doi.org/10.1093/rapstu/raaa008
Baur, D., & Glover, K. (2012). A gold bubble? Working Paper Series 175, Finance Discipline Group, UTS Business School, University of Technology, Sydney. https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:uts:wpaper:175
Baur, D. G., & Dimpfl, T. (2021). The volatility of Bitcoin and its role as a medium of exchange and a store of value. Empirical Economics, 61, 2663–2683. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00181-020-01990-5
Baur, D. G., Hong, K., & Lee, A. D. (2018). Bitcoin: Medium of exchange or speculative assets? Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, 54, 177–189. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.intfin.2017.12.004
Baur, D. G., & Lucey, B. M. (2010). Is gold a hedge or a safe haven? An analysis of stocks, bonds and gold. Financial Review, 45(2), 217–229. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6288.2010.00244.x
Baur, D. G., & McDermott, T. K. (2010). Is gold a safe haven? International evidence. Journal of Banking & Finance, 34(8), 1886–1898. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbankfin.2009.12.008
Beckmann, J., Berger, T., & Czudaj, R. (2015). Does gold act as a hedge or a safe haven for stocks? A smooth transition approach. Economic Modelling, 48, 16–24. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econmod.2014.10.044
Bekaert, G., & Panayotov, G. (2020). Good carry, bad carry. Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, 55(4), 1063–1094. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022109019000887
BenSaïda, A. (2019). Good and bad volatility spillovers: An asymmetric connectedness. Journal of Financial Markets, 43, 78–95. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.finmar.2018.12.005
BenSaïda, A. (2021). The good and bad volatility: A new class of asymmetric heteroskedastic models. Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, 83(2), 540–570. https://doi.org/10.1111/obes.12398
BenSaïda, A. (2023). The linkage between Bitcoin and foreign exchanges in developed and emerging markets. Financial Innovation, 9, 38. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40854-023-00454-w
BenSaïda, A., Boubaker, S., Nguyen, D. K., & Slim, S. (2018). Value-at-risk under market shifts through highly flexible models. Journal of Forecasting, 37(8), 790–804. https://doi.org/10.1002/for.2503
BenSaïda, A., & Litimi, H. (2021). Financial contagion across G10 stock markets: A study during major crises. International Journal of Finance & Economics, 26(3), 4798–4821. https://doi.org/10.1002/ijfe.2041
Bofinger, P., Dullien, S., Felbermayr, G., Fuest, C., Hüther, M., Südekum, J., & di Mauro, B. W. (2020). Economic implications of the COVID-19 crisis for Germany and economic policy measures. In R. Baldwin & B. W. di Mauro (Eds.), Mitigating the COVID economic crisis: Act fast and do whatever it takes (pp. 167–177). CEPR Press.
Böhme, R., Christin, N., Edelman, B., & Moore, T. (2015). Bitcoin: Economics, technology, and governance. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 29(2), 213–238. https://doi.org/10.1257/jep.29.2.213
Bollerslev, T. (1986). Generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity. Journal of Econometrics, 31(3), 307–327. https://doi.org/10.1016/0304-4076(86)90063-1
Bouoiyour, J., & Selmi, R. (2017). The Bitcoin price formation: Beyond the fundamental sources. Computational Finance. arXiv:1707.01284
Bouri, E., Lucey, B., & Roubaud, D. (2020). The volatility surprise of leading cryptocurrencies: Transitory and permanent linkages. Finance Research Letters, 33(101), 188. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.frl.2019.05.006
Bouri, E., Molnár, P., Azzi, G., Roubaud, D., & Hagfors, L. I. (2017). On the hedge and safe haven properties of Bitcoin: Is it really more than a diversifier? Finance Research Letters, 20, 192–198. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.frl.2016.09.025
Bouri, E., Shahzad, S. J. H., Roubaud, D., Kristoufek, L., & Lucey, B. (2020). Bitcoin, gold, and commodities as safe havens for stocks: New insight through wavelet analysis. The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, 77, 156–164. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.qref.2020.03.004
Cappiello, L., Engle, R. F., & Sheppard, K. (2006). Asymmetric dynamics in the correlations of global equity and bond returns. Journal of Financial Econometrics, 4(4), 537–572. https://doi.org/10.1093/jjfinec/nbl005
Chan, K. F., Treepongkaruna, S., Brooks, R., & Gray, S. (2011). Asset market linkages: Evidence from financial, commodity and real estate assets. Journal of Banking & Finance, 35(6), 1415–1426. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbankfin.2010.10.022
Chang, C. L., McAleer, M., & Tansuchat, R. (2011). Crude oil hedging strategies using dynamic multivariate GARCH. Energy Economics, 33(5), 912–923. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eneco.2011.01.009
Charfeddine, L., Benlagha, N., & Maouchi, Y. (2020). Investigating the dynamic relationship between cryptocurrencies and conventional assets: Implications for financial investors. Economic Modelling, 85, 198–217. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econmod.2019.05.016
Chemkha, R., BenSaïda, A., & Ghorbel, A. (2021). Connectedness between cryptocurrencies and foreign exchange markets: Implication for risk management. Journal of Multinational Financial Management, 59(100), 666. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mulfin.2020.100666
Chemkha, R., BenSaïda, A., Ghorbel, A., & Tayachi, T. (2021). Hedge and safe haven properties during COVID-19: Evidence from Bitcoin and gold. The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, 82, 71–85. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.qref.2021.07.006
Chkili, W. (2016). Dynamic correlations and hedging effectiveness between gold and stock markets: Evidence for BRICS countries. Research in International Business and Finance, 38, 22–34. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ribaf.2016.03.005
Ciner, C., Gurdgiev, C., & Lucey, B. M. (2013). Hedges and safe havens: An examination of stocks, bonds, gold, oil and exchange rates. International Review of Financial Analysis, 29, 202–211. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.irfa.2012.12.001
Conlon, T., & McGee, R. (2020). Safe haven or risky hazard? Bitcoin during the Covid-19 bear market. Finance Research Letters, 35(101), 607. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.frl.2020.101607
Corbet, S., Larkin, C., & Lucey, B. (2020). The contagion effects of the COVID-19 pandemic: Evidence from gold and cryptocurrencies. Finance Research Letters, 35(101), 554. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.frl.2020.101554
Corbet, S., Meegan, A., Larkin, C., Lucey, B., & Yarovaya, L. (2018). Exploring the dynamic relationships between cryptocurrencies and other financial assets. Economics Letters, 165, 28–34. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econlet.2018.01.004
Dickey, D. A., & Fuller, W. A. (1979). Distribution of the estimators for autoregressive time series with a unit root. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 74(366), 427–431. https://doi.org/10.2307/2286348
Ding, Z., Granger, C. W., & Engle, R. F. (1993). A long memory property of stock market returns and a new model. Journal of Empirical Finance, 1(1), 83–106. https://doi.org/10.1016/0927-5398(93)90006-D
Dutta, A., Das, D., Jana, R., & Vo, X. V. (2020). COVID-19 and oil market crash: Revisiting the safe haven property of gold and Bitcoin. Resources Policy, 69(101), 816. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.resourpol.2020.101816
Dwita Mariana, C., Ekaputra, I. A., & Husodo, Z. A. (2020). Are Bitcoin and Ethereum safe-havens for stocks during the COVID-19 pandemic? Finance Research Letters. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.frl.2020.101798
Dyhrberg, A. H. (2016). Bitcoin, gold and the dollar: A GARCH volatility analysis. Finance Research Letters, 16, 85–92. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.frl.2015.10.008
Eisl, A., Gasser, S. M., & Weinmayer, K. (2015). Caveat emptor: Does Bitcoin improve portfolio diversification? SSRN Electronic Journal. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2408997
Elder, J., Miao, H., & Ramchander, S. (2012). Impact of macroeconomic news on metal futures. Journal of Banking & Finance, 36(1), 51–65. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbankfin.2011.06.007
Engle, R. (2002). Dynamic conditional correlation. Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, 20(3), 339–350. https://doi.org/10.1198/073500102288618487
Engle, R. F., & Kroner, K. F. (1995). Multivariate simultaneous generalized ARCH. Econometric Theory, 11(1), 122–150. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0266466600009063
Engle, R. F., & Sheppard, K. (2001). Theoretical and empirical properties of dynamic conditional correlation multivariate GARCH. Working Paper 2001–2015, University of California, San Diego. http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~rengle/Dcc-Sheppard.pdf
Flavin, T. J., Morley, C. E., & Panopoulou, E. (2014). Identifying safe haven assets for equity investors through an analysis of the stability of shock transmission. Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, 33, 137–154. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.intfin.2014.08.001
Glosten, L. R., Jagannathan, R., & Runkle, D. E. (1993). On the relation between the expected value and the volatility of the nominal excess return on stocks. The Journal of Finance, 48(5), 1779–1801. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6261.1993.tb05128.x
Goodell, J. W., & Goutte, S. (2021). Co-movement of COVID-19 and Bitcoin: Evidence from wavelet coherence analysis. Finance Research Letters, 38(101), 625. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.frl.2020.101625
Guesmi, K., Saadi, S., Abid, I., & Ftiti, Z. (2019). Portfolio diversification with virtual currency: Evidence from Bitcoin. International Review of Financial Analysis, 63, 431–437. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.irfa.2018.03.004
Hoang, T. H. V., Lahiani, A., & Heller, D. (2016). Is gold a hedge against inflation? New evidence from a nonlinear ARDL approach. Economic Modelling, 54, 54–66. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econmod.2015.12.013
Hood, M., & Malik, F. (2013). Is gold the best hedge and a safe haven under changing stock market volatility? Review of Financial Economics, 22(2), 47–52. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rfe.2013.03.001
Ji, Q., Bouri, E., Gupta, R., & Roubaud, D. (2018). Network causality structures among Bitcoin and other financial assets: A directed acyclic graph approach. The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, 70, 203–213. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.qref.2018.05.016
Ji, Q., Zhang, D., & Zhao, Y. (2020). Searching for safe-haven assets during the COVID-19 pandemic. International Review of Financial Analysis, 71(101), 526. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.irfa.2020.101526
Joy, M. (2011). Gold and the US dollar: Hedge or haven? Finance Research Letters, 8(3), 120–131. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.frl.2011.01.001
Khalfaoui, R., Gozgor, G., & Goodell, J. W. (2022). Impact of Russia–Ukraine war attention on cryptocurrency: Evidence from quantile dependence analysis. Finance Research Letters. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.frl.2022.103365
Klein, T. (2017). Dynamic correlation of precious metals and flight-to-quality in developed markets. Finance Research Letters, 23, 283–290. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.frl.2017.05.002
Klein, T., Pham Thu, H., & Walther, T. (2018). Bitcoin is not the new gold: A comparison of volatility, correlation, and portfolio performance. International Review of Financial Analysis, 59, 105–116. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.irfa.2018.07.010
Kroner, K. F., & Sultan, J. (1993). Time-varying distributions and dynamic hedging with foreign currency futures. The Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, 28(4), 535–551. https://doi.org/10.2307/2331164
Lawrence, C. (2003). Why is gold different from other assets? An empirical investigation. Working paper, World Gold Council, London. http://www.spdrgoldshares.com/media/GLD/file/colin_lawrence_report.pdf
Li, S., & Lucey, B. M. (2017). Reassessing the role of precious metals as safe havens: What colour is your haven and why? Journal of Commodity Markets, 7, 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcomm.2017.05.003
López Cabrera, B., & Schulz, F. (2016). Volatility linkages between energy and agricultural commodity prices. Energy Economics, 54, 190–203. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eneco.2015.11.018
Lucey, B. M., & Li, S. (2015). What precious metals act as safe havens, and when? Some US evidence. Applied Economics Letters, 22(1), 35–45. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504851.2014.920471
Nelson, D. B. (1991). Conditional heteroskedasticity in asset returns: A new approach. Econometrica, 59(2), 347–370. https://doi.org/10.2307/2938260
Popper, N. (2016). Digital gold: The untold story of Bitcoin. HarperCollins.
Ratner, M., & Chiu, C. C. J. (2013). Hedging stock sector risk with credit default swaps. International Review of Financial Analysis, 30, 18–25. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.irfa.2013.05.001
Salisu, A. A., Raheem, I. D., & Vo, X. V. (2021). Assessing the safe haven property of the gold market during COVID-19 pandemic. International Review of Financial Analysis, 74(101), 666. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.irfa.2021.101666
Shahzad, S. J. H., Bouri, E., Roubaud, D., & Kristoufek, L. (2020). Safe haven, hedge and diversification for G7 stock markets: Gold versus Bitcoin. Economic Modelling, 87, 212–224. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econmod.2019.07.023
Shahzad, S. J. H., Bouri, E., Roubaud, D., Kristoufek, L., & Lucey, B. (2019). Is Bitcoin a better safe-haven investment than gold and commodities? International Review of Financial Analysis, 63, 322–330. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.irfa.2019.01.002
Wen, T., & Wang, G. J. (2020). Volatility connectedness in global foreign exchange markets. Journal of Multinational Financial Management, 54(100), 617. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mulfin.2020.100617
Xu, Q., Chen, L., Jiang, C., & Yuan, J. (2018). Measuring systemic risk of the banking industry in China: A DCC-MIDAS-t approach. Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, 51, 13–31. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pacfin.2018.05.009
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
About this article
Cite this article
BenSaïda, A. Safe haven property of gold and cryptocurrencies during COVID-19 and Russia–Ukraine conflict. Ann Oper Res (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10479-023-05517-w
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10479-023-05517-w