Is gold a safe haven against equity market investment in emerging and developing countries?

•We analyze safe haven and hedge properties of gold against equity market investments.•We consider both domestic and foreign investors’ return perspectives.•We also repeat our analyses for the global crisis period.•For domestic investors, gold is both a hedge and a safe haven in most of the countries.•Gold is a safe haven in more countries as equity markets decline more severely. The hedge and safe haven properties of gold in advanced economies’ financial markets are well documented in the literature. Studies of how this issue relates to emerging markets and developing countries are, however, very limited. This paper aims to fill this gap by empirically analyzing the hedge and safe haven properties of gold against equity market investment for a large group of emerging and developing countries from the perspective of both domestic and foreign investors. We also check whether our findings differ in the post-global crisis period. Our results show that for domestic investors, gold is both a hedge and a safe haven in most of these countries. This result also holds in the post-2008 crisis period. In addition, when falls in equity markets become more severe, gold acts as a safe haven in a larger set of countries for both domestic and foreign investors.