Are safe haven Swiss Franc, yen and dollar looking not so safe?

Ask an investor to name safe haven currencies, and most will say the US dollar, the Swiss franc, and the Japanese yen.

Investors have historically expected these currencies to retain their value during geopolitical or economic turmoil.

But recently, these same currencies have seen fluctuations. The dollar and yen saw sharp declines during 2025 and into 2026. The franc has strengthened, but this poses a challenge for a country with unusually low inflation and dependence on exports.

US President Donald Trump has rearranged global trade by imposing tariffs in 2025, sparking “Selling America“Trade: Selling US assets, including the dollar, the world’s reserve currency.

The suddenness with which other tariffs were imposed and withdrawn kept the pressure on.

In a December note, Swiss private bank Julius Baer said that “erratic trade policies” were just one cause of the dollar’s ​​woes, adding that Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” had put the US on an “unsustainable debt path.”

The memo stated that Trump’s pressure on US Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell also undermined investors’ confidence in the dollar.

the Dollar indexThe dollar index, which measures the greenback against a basket of similar currencies, fell 1.3% on January 29 after Trump said the dollar was “doing great,” its biggest single-day decline since Trump first announced the tariffs in April. This led to the dollar falling to its lowest level in nearly four years.

The index fell by 9.37% in 2025, and fell further in 2026.

In a note on Wednesday, George Saravelos, head of FX research at Deutsche Bank, said the dollar’s safe-haven status is a “myth.”

He challenged the idea that the dollar “rises during risk aversion,” adding: “A simple graph of the relationship between the dollar and stocks shows that this is not true. The average correlation between the dollar and stocks has historically been closer to zero, and over the past year the dollar has again decoupled from the S&P.”

Cole Smead, CEO and portfolio manager at Smead Capital Management, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” at the end of January that he sees more weakness ahead for the dollar.

“We are in a long-term bear market for the dollar,” he said. “If you go back and look at this ‘American obsession’ [in markets]If you go back and look at the telecom bubble and the technology bubble of the late 1990s, the dollar peaked in 2002, and within six years, you saw the dollar fall to a level it had never seen before. [a] A very, very long time.”

The US dollar index fell about 41% between 2002 and its low in 2008.

The yen has fallen by 5.9% since Takaishi joined on January 23, Before a “Price Check” has been reported. The New York Fed’s decision on the USD/JPY pair on January 23 saw the currency rise sharply to around 152.

However, the yen began to weaken, heading towards the 157 level, before rising again after the LDP He witnessed a landslide victory In the House of Representatives elections on Sunday.

Citi analysts said the yen was unlikely to weaken beyond the 160 level, given that this could prompt Japanese or US authorities to intervene.

“The yen will approach the 160 level again, but there will likely be a struggle between the market and the authorities near the 159 level.” Dutch bank ING said in a note dated February 9. US Treasury Secretary Scott Besent denied this The United States had intervened Before checking the January price.

Unlike the dollar and the yen, Swiss franc The country of origin is not large, but Switzerland’s political stability, low debt and diversified economy already make it a safe haven. The search for stable assets has benefited it over the past year. It has retained its value more clearly than the dollar or the yen.

During 2025, the franc appreciated by approximately 13% against the US dollar. It extended those gains through 2026, hitting an 11-year high against the dollar. It also touched its highest level in 11 years against the euro Earlier this month.

The course of the franc has been completely free of disturbances. On January 30, such as gold and silver After experiencing a historic sell-off that wiped out up to 30% of the latter’s value, investors also turned away from the Swiss franc, with the currency falling by about 1.2% against the dollar.

But this was one of only 10 trading days over the past year where the price fell against the dollar. But that power Causing problems In Switzerland – and if it strengthens, it could force officials to intervene as they try to curb the impact of the hot currency on the broader economy.

Unusually among advanced economies, Switzerland is suffering from slow price growth, and a stronger franc may add more deflationary pressures on the country’s export-based economy.

The country’s inflation rate is just 0.1%, and the Swiss National Bank’s key interest rate is 0%. With officials trying to avoid bringing back the unpopular negative interest rate policy from 2015 to 2022, the franc’s appreciation is complicating the SNB’s efforts. Picture of monetary policy

Swiss officials have previously intervened in the foreign exchange market by selling francs and buying foreign currencies to help cool their currencies.

But doing so now comes with risks, with the Trump administration – in its first and second iterations – objecting to the SNB’s interventions.

SNB President Martin Schlegel told CNBC’s Karen Tsu on the sidelines of the conference World Economic Forum in DavosSwitzerland, last month, said the bank was “ready to intervene in the foreign exchange market if necessary.”

Economists at Swiss investment bank UBS – which expects the franc to lose about 2% against the dollar by the end of the year – said in a note on Wednesday that the Swiss central bank was unlikely to “react aggressively” to the currency’s rise.

“Scattered interventions in the foreign exchange market are possible, but widespread action is not justified, in our view, given the limited deflation risks, the optimistic global growth outlook, and the moderate overvaluation of the Swiss franc,” they said.

However, the bank also said in a separate report that it sees limited appreciation for the franc going forward.

Economists polled by Reuters earlier this month said they expected the dollar to regain 2.2% against the franc by the end of April.

Matthew Ryan, head of market strategy at global financial services firm Ebori, told CNBC on Wednesday that the dollar and yen have “undoubtedly lost some of their luster recently,” while the Swiss franc has “cemented itself as the safe-haven currency of choice.”

Lee Hardman, a UK-based currency analyst at Japanese bank MUFG, agrees that the safe-haven appeal of both the yen and the dollar has been “undermined” by political turmoil.

“In the long term [Swiss franc] It has proven to be the best store of value among other G10 currencies including the Japanese yen and the US dollar.”