Name: On The Money: What counts as a 'safe haven' in 2026? | REUTERS
Uploaded: 2026-01-14T17:13:37.000Z
Duration: 6 min 12 s
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President Trump issued threats to Cuba, Colombia and Greenland just in the first working week of the new year.

Russia fired a nuclear capable missile at Ukraine.

China carried out military exercises off Taiwan.

And all the while some investors are warning about a stock bubble.

So what are the safe alternatives for your money?

Nobody should confuse safe haven with risk free.

Nothing is risk free in markets as we know.

Lets take a look at some traditionally safe stores for your money.

It's the world's reserve currency, meaning commodities around the globe are priced in dollars.

But in 2025, the US dollar lost 10% of its value.

A lot of the erratic policy making from the Trump administration in the early days I think really did upset the apple cart a little bit.

At no point did anybody say, oh, you don't want to own the dollar because it's not safe anymore.

But it simply added a little bit of uncertainty to what had previously been a fairly cast iron narrative that that is, there is nothing safer than the greenback.

There is a huge amount of debt building up.

There's a big fiscal deficit in the US and that's in a time of economic growth.

So you know, we don't quite know what's going to happen there.

We also know that there are some further US risks this year with the new appointment of the new Federal Reserve head.

And if this is seen as too much of a political appointee, and

if the influence is going to start swinging away from investors believing the Federal Reserve is truly independent, that could also cause some worries about the US itself.

Most of the world's business is done in dollars.

It is the most widely used thing in the world, the most widely traded thing in the world.

Whether you trade the dollar itself or something denominated in dollar like dollars, like gold or barrels of crude oil, ultimately all comes back to the dollar.

So it's very difficult to see another currency replacing the dollar.

But it's true that there are alternatives.

For example, in times of real crisis, safe haven currencies include things like the Swiss franc, the Japanese yen.

What if you take your money and buy something solid with it instead, like a bar of gold?

You wouldn't be the first person to have that idea.

The price of Gold jumped 66% in 2025 and started the new year with new highs.

It's unusual to see to see that kind of climb in gold when other assets are doing so well.

I think there's been a lot of central bank buying.

I think that there have been non Western countries that have perhaps started to shy away from purely owning dollar assets and therefore they have been buyers of gold.

When you have these moments of big financial turmoil, let's say things like the market crisis that we saw take hold in April, that then settled the COVID crisis that stood stirred up markets, the financial crisis of 2008, and

people were very quick to say, oh, but gold dropped then.

If investors and retail investors are very concerned about the political with the lay of the land.

They see politically there is something about holding a physical asset which is a bearer asset.

You don't need to rely on a counterparty for any of it.

If you think that you have some money in a savings account or pennies in your piggy bank for a rainy day, a lot of people own gold for precisely that.

So when that rainy day arrives, what are they going to do?

It's something they can easily convert to dollars.

Somebody will always be on the buying end and that can even be a central bank, the buyer of last resort.

Another classic safety play is to buy the debt issued by governments, especially the U.S. treasury.

But the soaring size of that debt and erratic government policy, especially around international tariffs, made investors jittery in 2025.

The bond vigilantes came out briefly in April last year when we had Liberation Day and there were a lot of concerns about what would happen to the US economy and what would happen to the global economy if the level of tariffs that were initially proposed actually came into play.

So we did see that unusual circumstance of the equity market falling off and then also the dollar and the treasury market, which was really, I think, the point at which Trump's advisors said, look, we need to do something now, this is really serious.

What you've got to think of is why are you owning a U.S. treasury?

What is it that you expect from it to protect you against all and any risk?

Well, no, because the value of that treasury note will go up and down as well.

You expect interest payments throughout and your money back at the end of those 10 years.

And in that sense, as long as you believe in the US Government's creditworthiness, then it's a safe bet.

But whether it's safe and risk free is another issue entirely.

The US is not alone in having a significant debt pile.

for the moment, the US economy appears fairly robust.

I think we've just had some numbers out showing a little bit of an undershoot to expectations, but

closing out 2025 on near 4% economic growth is quite something, so maybe there's nothing to worry about.

And if you keep your savings in cash in a shoebox under the bed, inflation will still erode their value.

Cryptocurrencies were pitched as a safe haven, but they went on a wild roller coaster last year.

So maybe the answer isn't to find one safe asset, but to spread your bets.

It's the diversification of different assets and owning some real assets that will protect you against inflation.

Owning some fixed income assets, owning some gold, owning lots of different asset classes that's what gives you a better protection than just pinning your hopes on one particular asset.