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Research Paper | Information Technology | Volume 15 Issue 7, July 2026 | Pages: 777 - 782 | India
Gold as a Safe-Haven Asset: Myth or Reality? Evidence from Recent Indian Market Trends (2019-2025)
Abstract: Indian households and institutions have long treated gold as the asset of last resort, yet the academic verdict on its safe-haven credentials remains unsettled. This paper examines whether gold behaved consistently as a safe haven against Indian equities between 2019 and 2025-a period spanning the COVID-19 crash, a post-pandemic inflation surge, the Russia?Ukraine war, an aggressive Reserve Bank of India (RBI) tightening cycle, a customs-duty reset in 2024, and the foreign-portfolio-outflow and tariff turbulence of 2025. Using the hedge/diversifier/safe-haven taxonomy of Baur and Lucey (2010), the study evaluates episode-level returns, annual co-movement patterns, and policy transmission channels linking market stress to rupee gold prices. The evidence yields a qualified verdict: gold protected Indian portfolios in most stress windows and delivered an exceptional return of roughly 73 per cent in rupee terms during 2025, yet it failed transiently during the March 2020 dash-for-cash and remains vulnerable to abrupt domestic policy shifts such as the July 2024 import-duty cut. Gold's safe-haven status in India is therefore real but conditional- strongest in prolonged, fear-driven crises, weakest in acute liquidity panics, and persistently amplified by rupee depreciation.
Keywords: gold, safe haven, hedge, Nifty 50, Sensex, RBI, India, COVID-19, inflation, geopolitical risk
How to Cite?: Simrita Kaur, Raghu Raja Mehra, "Gold as a Safe-Haven Asset: Myth or Reality? Evidence from Recent Indian Market Trends (2019-2025)", Volume 15 Issue 7, July 2026, International Journal of Science and Research (IJSR), Pages: 777-782, https://www.ijsr.net/getabstract.php?paperid=SR26709215045, DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.21275/SR26709215045