Gold, gold, gold: the price is rising at record speed.image: keystone
Trump has alarmed the financial markets, similar to his “Liberation Day”.
January 27, 2026, 10:18 p.mJanuary 27, 2026, 10:18 p.m
Niklaus Vontobel / ch media
Nervousness seems to be back on the stock markets. Investors are fleeing to supposedly safe havens. That’s why the price of gold has risen to over $5,000 per troy ounce – a new all-time high. Gold has increased in price by 18 percent this year alone. By 2025 the price had risen by 65 percent and more than $2,000. It was the highest annual increase since 1979.
But it is not just the price of gold that signals a flight to safety – or a move away from the US dollar, which is apparently viewed as unsafe. The dollar has fallen sharply against the franc, falling by over 2 percent in the last five days alone. Together with the losses from last year, the dollar has lost over 14 percent against the franc within a year.
The numbers are similar when you look at the dollar exchange rate against the euro. There has been a decline of over 1.5 percent over the last five days. And over a year it is more than 11 percent. The national currencies of Sweden and Norway have also risen sharply against the dollar, both by well over 2 percent since the beginning of the year. Over this period, both currencies have actually appreciated more than the Swiss franc. At the moment they seem to be considered even safer havens than the franc.
What is behind all this? What happened that shook the markets more than all of Donald Trump’s previous breaches of taboos? For example, a prosecutor allied with him has begun a criminal investigation against Jerome Powell, the head of the US Federal Reserve Bank. The markets more or less accepted this with a shrug of their shoulders.
Trump explains the world to the journalists present on Airforce One.Image: keystone
What could have been different now says Robin Brooksformerly chief strategist at the investment bank Goldman Sachs and now at the liberal Brookings Institute. Although it is just his best guess, as he writes on the Substack platform. Brooks is also amazed at how the stock markets can withstand all attacks on the Fed – and even continue to break new records.
Is the chaos too much for the markets?
His statement reads: “Markets draw a line when the Trump administration angers countries allied with the United States.” In other words, attacks on the Fed are no reason to panic. Maybe because markets believe the Fed will maintain its independence.
However, it is something different when Trump rages against the USA’s most important trading partners. Not because Trump violates the rules of political politeness when he mocks Federal Councilor Karin Keller-Sutter from the lectern at the World Economic Forum.
The stock market is of little interest in such things. But, according to Brooks’ theory: “They believe that the dispute over Greenland and the chaotic way in which it was conducted will backfire for the USA.”
Where “backfire” means: The USA suffers more than its trading partners from a customs dispute or just from weaker economic relations. The US Federal Reserve will have to combat this by cutting its key interest rates more than its trading partners do. The prospect of such interest rate hikes is already making the dollar less attractive. And, says Brooks, the financial markets are already anticipating lower US interest rates in the next two years.
The Greenland squabble could backfire for the US.Image: keystone
Brooks sums it up this way: “Markets have ignored all the attacks on the Fed, but they are not ignoring the political chaos.”
This explanation is supported by the fact that the markets are reacting these days in the same way as they did on Trump’s so-called “Liberation Day” in April 2025. At that time, Trump chaotically announced record-high tariffs against all trading partners – bizarrely also against an island on which no humans live, but many penguins.
As in the last few days, the dollar then fell sharply, including against the euro and the franc. It was only when Trump further pushed out tariffs that the stock market recovered. The US stock market even rose to new all-time highs in 2025. Meanwhile, the dollar remained weaker against the euro and the franc, even if it recovered around the summer and at least did not lose any further in value.
Americans pay the tariffs themselves
Trump has actually delivered a lot of chaos recently, even by his standards. He has claimed Greenland, which belongs to NATO ally Denmark, as his own. Threatened tariffs against European countries that signaled resistance. In doing so, he would have broken an agreement that the USA had just negotiated with the EU.
France has threatened Trump with 200 percent tariffs on wine. President Emmanuel Macron refused to pay $1 billion to have his country included in Trump’s so-called peace panel. Announced a deal on Greenland, even though he had not spoken to its president or Denmark’s prime minister. Trump recently threatened Canada with 100 percent tariffs if it concluded a trade agreement with China.
Trump could have caused lasting damage. Brooks expects the dollar to now return to the downward trend seen in the first half of 2025. “The risk is high that there will be a long and significant decline.”
And Moritz Schularick, head of the Kiel Institute, says: “Trump’s appearance in Davos showed once again: the USA is no longer a reliable partner.” In a study, his institute also showed: “Americans are paying almost entirely for Trump’s tariffs.” Foreign exporters would pass on 96 percent of the tariff burden to consumers and importers in the USA. The study says: “The tariffs are an own goal.”