Do commodity assets hedge uncertainties? What we learn from the recent turbulence period?

This study analyses the impact of different uncertainties on commodity markets to assess commodity markets' hedging or safe-haven properties. Using time-varying dynamic conditional correlation and wavelet-based Quantile-on-Quantile regression models, our findings show that, both before and during the COVID-19 crisis, soybeans and clean energy stocks offer strong safe-haven opportunities against cryptocurrency price uncertainty and geopolitical risks (GPR). Soybean markets weakly hedge cryptocurrency policy uncertainty, US economic policy uncertainty, and crude oil volatility. In addition, GSCI commodity and crude oil also offer a weak safe-haven property against cryptocurrency uncertainties and GPR. Consistent with earlier studies, our findings indicate that safe-haven traits can alter across frequencies and quantiles. Our findings have significant implications for investors and regulators in hedging and making proper decisions, respectively, under diverse uncertain circumstances.

Are safe haven assets really safe during the 2008 global financial crisis and COVID-19 pandemic?

This study evaluates the safe-haven role of twelve assets against the US stock market during the 2008 global financial crisis (GFC) and the COVID-19 pandemic. Our results show that silver and the Islamic stock index were safe havens during the 2008 GFC, and the Islamic stock index and Tether have been safe havens during COVID-19. We observe that the Islamic stock index and Tether have emerged as strong new safe havens. However, our supplementary analysis reveals that gold and Bitcoin still exhibit safe-haven behavior during severe market downturns. Overall, our findings suggest that safe-haven assets may vary over time.