Gold's hedging and safe haven properties for European stock and bond markets

Abstract

Most portfolio managers and risk managers strive to pick assets that lead to efficient financial risk mitigation; among them, gold stands out. This paper provides new insights into the role of gold as both a hedge and a safe haven towards European stock and sovereign bond markets. We base the analysis on evidence spanning the Euro's inception to the COVID-19 pandemic spread across Europe. To capture gold's hedge ability, we use the ADCC-GARCH and DCC-GARCH models, while for testing gold's safe haven property we use OLS regressions for different quantiles. Our results show that gold is a hedge for stocks, particularly after the Lehman Brothers collapse. Gold also shows strong safe haven properties for the most extreme negative returns (1% and 2.5% quantiles), and during specific events, such as the Lehman Brothers collapse, the Greek bailout and the Brexit Referendum. Still, for the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak, the results do not confirm this property. Conversely, for bonds, both hedge and safe haven effects are not strongly evident, with gold characterised, at best, as a weak hedge and safe haven. These findings have portfolio allocation implications for investors in European markets, namely fund and risk managers, by pointing out gold hedging and safe haven attributes.