By Chibuike Oguh and Yadarisa Shabong
NEW YORK (Reuters) -Investors bought into safe havens such as the dollar, yen and Swiss franc on Monday as concerns about a global recession heightened following U.S. President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs on trading partners.
Global markets plunged on Monday, with Wall Street stocks trading lower after Asian shares sank, as investors wagered the mounting risk of a deep economic downturn could lead to a cut in U.S. interest rates as early as May.
The risk-sensitive Australian and New Zealand dollars, as well as the Swedish and Norwegian crowns, all dropped against the dollar.
The dollar cut its losses against other safe-haven currencies. It was up 0.50% against the yen to 147.605, after tumbling more than 1.4% earlier in the session.
The dollar also hit its lowest in six months against the Swiss franc and was last down 0.06% at 0.8605 franc in choppy trading..
“The only thing we know for sure is that it’s volatile … But I think broadly, leaving aside nuances, because tariffs are thought to be hurting world growth, those currencies that seem to be more like risk-on currencies – the dollar bloc and the Scandies – they are underperforming,” said Marc Chandler, chief market strategist at Bannockburn Global Forex in New York.
“On the other hand, the currencies that are typically safe-haven currencies – like the Swiss franc and yen – are performing better.”
The euro, which gained as much as 0.7% to $1.1050 earlier in the session, was down 0.39% at $1.091775.
“The euro has certainly performed really quite well over the last couple of days since we’ve heard about the tariffs,” said Jane Foley, head of FX strategy at Rabobank.
“Maybe that’s related to the euro zone current account position, or maybe it’s just related to investors still moving out of U.S. assets and still not quite sure where they should be moving their money to.”
While the dollar is typically known as a safe-haven asset, that status seems to be eroding as uncertainty over tariffs and concern over their impact on U.S. growth intensify.
European Union countries will seek to present a united front in the coming days against Trump’s tariffs, likely approving a first set of targeted countermeasures on up to $28 billion of U.S. imports ranging from dental floss to diamonds.
Sterling hit a one-month low at $1.27465 and was last down 1.05% against the greenback.
The Aussie, often used as a proxy for risk appetite, tumbled to a five-year low earlier in the session, but was last down 0.51% to $0.601.
The New Zealand dollar eased 0.86% to $0.5547, having slid more than 1% earlier in the session.
Trump’s tariff announcements wiped out nearly $6 trillion in value from U.S. stocks last week. When asked about the impact, Trump said on Sunday that sometimes “medicine” was needed to fix things, adding he was not intentionally engineering a market selloff.
TRADERS HOPE FOR RAPID U.S. RATE CUTS
More than 50 nations have approached the White House to begin trade talks. China, which has struck back with countermeasures including extra levies of 34% on all U.S. goods, said on Saturday “the market has spoken.”
Traders have ramped up bets of more Federal Reserve rate cuts this year on the view policymakers would have to ease more aggressively to shore up growth in the world’s largest economy.
Markets swung to imply an approximately 55% chance of a Fed cut in May, and futures now point to more than 100 basis points worth of rate cuts by December this year. Investors were previously expecting the Fed to keep rates on hold next month.
Fed Chair Jerome Powell cautioned on Friday it was still too soon to know what the right response from the central bank ought to be.
(Reporting by Rae Wee in Singapore and Yadarisa Shabong in Bengaluru; editing by Himani Sarkar, Edwina Gibbs, Susan Fenton, Mark Heinrich and Rod Nickel)
