If investors were asked to name safe-haven currencies, most would say the U.S. dollar, Swiss franc and Japanese yen.

Investors have historically expected them to maintain their value during periods of geopolitical or economic turmoil.

But lately, the currencies themselves have experienced volatility. The dollar and yen will fall sharply in 2025 and 2026. The Swiss franc strengthened, but that’s a challenge for a country with unusually low inflation and reliance on exports.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s bid to reorder global trade through tariffs in 2025 triggered a “sell america” Trade: Sell off U.S. assets, including the world’s reserve currency, the U.S. dollar.

The pressure is mounting with the sudden imposition and withdrawal of other tariffs.

Swiss private bank Julius Baer said in a December report that “unstable trade policy” was just one reason the dollar was in trouble, adding that Trump’s “Beautiful Act” bill had put the U.S. on an “unsustainable debt trajectory.”

Trump’s pressure on Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell also undermined investor confidence in the dollar, the report said.

this dollar indexExchange rates tracking the greenback against a basket of currencies fell 1.3% on Jan. 29, the biggest one-day drop since Trump first announced tariffs in April, after Trump said the dollar was “doing great.” That sent the dollar to its lowest level in nearly four years.

The index plummeted 9.37% in 2025 and fell further in 2026.

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

He questioned the idea that the dollar was “rising on risk aversion,” adding: “A simple chart of the dollar’s relationship with equities suggests otherwise. Historically, the dollar’s average correlation with equities has been close to zero, and last year the dollar decoupled from the S&P again.”

Smead Capital Management CEO and portfolio manager Cole Smead told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” in late January that he expected the dollar to weaken further going forward.

“Longer term, we are in a dollar bear market,” he said. “If you look back at these ‘American manias’ (in the market), if you look back at the telecom bubble and the tech bubble in the late 1990s, the dollar peaked in 2002, and within six years you saw the dollar fall to lows that we haven’t seen in a very, very long time.”

Between 2002 and the 2008 lows, the U.S. dollar index plummeted about 41%.

The yen has fallen 5.9% since the high market took office to January 23, Before Report “Rate Check” The USD/JPY exchange rate announced by the New York Fed on January 23 strengthened significantly to around 152.

However, the yen started to weaken towards the 157 level and then strengthened again after the LDP election. saw an overwhelming victory in Sunday’s House of Commons election.

Citi analysts said the yen was unlikely to depreciate well beyond the 160 level, as that could prompt intervention by Japanese or U.S. authorities.

“The yen will approach the 160 level again, but a battle between the market and the authorities is likely around the 159 mark,” Dutch bank ING said in a report on February 9. U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant denies The United States has intervened Before the January rate check.

Unlike the U.S. dollar and Japanese yen Swiss franc The motherland is small, but Switzerland’s political stability, low debt and diversified economy make it a safe-haven asset. The search for stable assets last year benefited it. It retains its value more clearly than the U.S. dollar or Japanese yen.

In 2025, the Swiss franc will rise by nearly 13% against the US dollar. It has extended those gains into 2026, hitting an 11-year high against the dollar. Also hit an 11-year high against euro earlier this month.

The Swiss franc’s movements were not volatile at all. January 30, as gold and silver Affected by the historic sell-off, the value of the Swiss franc evaporated by 30%, and investors also fled the Swiss franc. The Swiss franc fell by about 1.2% against the US dollar.

But it was one of only 10 trading days last year when the yuan fell against the dollar. But that power is cause problems In Switzerland, if the exchange rate strengthens, it could force officials to intervene to curb the impact of a hot currency on the broader economy.

Unusually among advanced economies, Switzerland is struggling with sluggish price growth, and a stronger franc could put further deflationary pressure on the country’s export-driven economy.

The country’s inflation rate is just 0.1%, and the Swiss National Bank’s key interest rate is 0%. The stronger Swiss franc complicates SNB policy as officials try to avoid a return to the unpopular negative interest rate policy from 2015 to 2022. Monetary policy diagram.

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

But doing so now carries risks, and the Trump administration – both in its first and second terms – has raised questions about the SNB’s intervention.

SNB President Martin Schlegel told CNBC’s Karen Tso on the sidelines of the meeting Davos World Economic ForumSwitzerland said last month it was “ready to intervene in foreign exchange markets if necessary”.

Economists at Swiss investment bank UBS predict the Swiss franc will fall about 2% against the dollar by the end of the year. The Swiss National Bank is unlikely to “respond strongly” to the currency’s appreciation, the Swiss National Bank said in a report on Wednesday.

“Sporadic FX intervention is possible, but we believe widespread action is not warranted given limited deflationary risks, the optimistic global growth outlook and the modest overvaluation of the Swiss franc,” they said.

However, the bank also said in a separate report that it expected the Swiss franc to have limited room for future gains.

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

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

Lee Hardman, a currency analyst at Bank of Japan’s Mitsubishi UFJ in the UK, also believes that the safe-haven appeal of the yen and the dollar has been “diminished” by political turmoil.

“In the long term, the Swiss franc has proven to be the best store of value among other G10 currencies, including the Japanese yen and the U.S. dollar,” he said.