Bitcoin has gained more recognition than ever before, and the interest in cryptocurrencies seems to grow exponentially. Without any central government regulating Bitcoin, a global user group has adopted this new technology, which is designed to be used as a currency for trading without banks. Empirical studies focus on revealing the true characteristic of cryptocurrencies. Are they a currency, an asset or something else? This paper explores the potential of Bitcoin as a financial asset when used for hedging and portfolio diversification. A regression analysis will be performed to analyse if Bitcoin can be used as a hedge against OMXS30. This analysis yields insignificant values, which leads to a complication in the conclusion. The result imply that Bitcoin is an inadequate hedge, but may possess diversification properties. Studying Bitcoin in relation to OMXS30, Dow Jones, Nikkei 225, Gold and Oil results in correlation values close to zero. By using the mean-variance optimization method, two portfolios are created, one including and one excluding Bitcoin. We show that by including Bitcoin in the portfolio the risk can be decreased on a given return rate. Considering the low and insignificant correlation values with other assets and the better riskreturn ratio when Bitcoin is included in a portfolio, we conclude that Bitcoin can be a suitable diversification tool.

This paper explores the possibility of gold and Bitcoin acting as safe haven investments during the Corona pandemic. To answer the research question the authors use OLS-, GARCH-, and TGARCH-models. The S&P 500 stock- and S&P U.S. Aggregate bond-indexes are used as a measure of the performance on U.S. stock- and bond-market. Safe haven assets have a negative beta during turbulent times and therefore the period of 2020-01-01 to 2022-03-31 will be analyzed. A period of five years leading up to the pandemic as well as the turbulent time period will be used as an average to enable comparison between regular and trying times. The results conclude that neither Bitcoin nor gold can be viewed as safe haven assets. However, it is found that both assets can work as diversifiers in the two markets.

Currency carry trade is an investment strategy that recently started gaining a lot of interest not only among investors and financial institutions but also academically. One of the underlying theoretical assumptions regarding the mechanisms of the foreign exchange market, the Uncovered Interest Parity has frequently been disproved in practice which has led to the conclusion that carry trade is profitable in practice. The function of a carry trade strategy is that a short position is taken in a low interest rate currency to finance a long position in another currency offering higher yields. This thesis is adding to the existing literature that is explaining the characteristics of currency carry trade but is adopting a different approach than most other recent researches that has focused on identifying especially risk factors. Gold as a financial asset has also received much attention largely due to its, contrarily to other asset classes, low dependence on macroeconomic factors. This makes gold desirable to diversify portfolios and decreasing overall risks. By investigating how the returns of currency carry trades and gold relates to each other an increased understanding in how carry trades can be beneficially included in managing portfolios are developed. Looking at a currency carry trade index, Deutsche Bank’s G10 Currency Future Harvest index, and the development of the gold price at the London bullion market for the 20 year period of 1993-2013 this research is exploring correlation, mean and volatility spillover effects. Spearman’s correlation, Vector Autoregression and a diagonal BEKK GARCH model are employed to test these effects. It also investigates if gold possesses hedge, diversifier and safe haven characteristics when combined with carry trades as it has been found to do with stock markets. This is determined by a regression analysis and supplemented by a portfolio simulation. This thesis found that there is a low positive correlation between the returns of gold and currency carry trades and that there is spillover effects as well between the two in both returns and volatility. This in addition to the regression analysis and portfolio analysis determined that there are diversification benefits by adding gold to a portfolio consisting of currency carry trade in the form of higher risk adjusted returns. However special caution has to be taken to the spillover effects as these complicate the relationship between the returns of the two variables and especially the volatility spillover effects slightly decreases the potential diversification benefit. The regression analysis concluded that gold work as a diversifier for carry trade but could not determine if it also exhibited hedge or safe haven characteristics. These findings pushes the existing understanding of carry trades forward and adds to focus of matching carry trades within a portfolio which could have implications to more efficiently match risks and returns by combining several asset classes in portfolio management.

When the financial markets start to shake investors start looking for a safe asset for protection. When people talk about a safe asset, they for the most part refer to gold. But is that really the case? There are few studies about gold as a safe haven however they do not concern the Swedish financial market. That is the purpose of this research; to examine if gold could act as a safe haven in the financial market in Sweden. This is of interest since there is an economic crisis caused by covid19 at this particular moment. The result could help us understand how investors could use gold in their portfolio of investments. To do this we have gathered daily returns from OMXS30, gold, and a 10-year Swedish government bond. With a statistical model we answered the question. When the financial markets start to shake investors start looking for a safe asset for protection. When people talk about a safe asset, they for the most part refer to gold. But is that really the case? There are few studies about gold as a safe haven however they do not concern the Swedish financial market. That is the purpose of this research; to examine if gold could act as a safe haven in the financial market in Sweden. This is of interest since there is an economic crisis caused by covid19 at this particular moment. The result could help us understand how investors could use gold in their portfolio of investments. To do this we have gathered daily returns from OMXS30, gold, and a 10-year Swedish government bond. With a statistical model we answered the question.