We can talk about risk off for gold or silver, for example, which are safe havens in times of war (Russia-Ukraine conflict)
In a world where the ruble is losing a lot of its value and where the Euro is being atomized by the dollar (today March 3, 2022), the Europeans have several choices: Either go into the US dollar, or into Bitcoin, gold or other...
Next to that we have stocks which are risky assets because they have numbers, revenues, profits etc and these can be variable. For example, the company can go bankrupt or cause a scandal like Volkswagen which had rigged its CO2 emissions on its cars in 2015. This had caused a dizzying fall in the stock market at the end of 2015! see chart below:
This is called risk on for stocks because the risk of an event can cause the value of the asset to fall sharply. So if the numbers are not good or if you imagine that we learn that Elon Musk has killed someone and that he is going to jail, you can be sure that Tesla's share price will drop sharply!
On the other hand, nothing can influence the value of gold downwards as much. We are not going to say overnight that gold turns into sand if you get it wet.
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In addition, until the 1970s, gold was backed by fiat currencies. Indeed, for every 1 dollar there was the equivalent in gold in the bank. However, President Nixon stopped the convertibility of Gold-Dollars on August 15, 1971.
So gold remains a safe haven that has proven itself because we know and have always known the value of gold and moreover it remains a deflationary value because there will not be infinite gold on our planet. We can then imagine that Bitcoin could one day become a safe haven like gold because there will only be 21 million BTC... This is probably not the case yet because it seems to follow the S&P500... But who knows?
Another example, imagine that we learn that Apple (the largest market capitalization in the world) has been hiding for years that iPhones give cancer or that Tim Cook is a serial killer, I can assure you that Apple's share price is going to drop dramatically. So it's an Asset Risk On!
There are many factors that can make a stock gain or lose value, making them risky assets.
Obviously, Gold (Risk off) can lose value but never as much as a stock that is exposed to catastrophic unforeseen events.
