Investing.com - Gold may have a reputation as being a safe-haven investment, but that hasn't been the case in reality for quite awhile.
And when money does flock to gold during uncertain times, the bump is short-lived.
Gold, which is up just 2% in 2018, did enjoy brief bounces this year after three unnerving events.
One was the stock market selloff of mid February. The other two were in March, when President Trump announced tariffs on steel and aluminum
and then again on a variety of Chinese goods.
Less recently, gold actually fell during the financial crisis of 2008 and 2009, when uncertainty and volatility ran high.
Previously to that, gold gained just 2% during the financial crisis of 1998 and 5% around the time of the 1987 stock market crash.
These days, analysts say the preferred safe haven investments of investors are U.S. Treasuries and volatility ETFs, which
make it easy to hedge against market declines.