sell-off

They offer strong liquidity and minimal credit risk, even though they briefly dipped alongside stocks during the latest sell-off.

Trump's tariff plans have driven a stock market sell-off and raised fears of economic recession.

But he made a U-turn, pausing most of those tariffs for 90 days after a sharp sell-off in US government bonds.

"For several years, the market's been buying this US growth story, the US stock market's been outperforming other stock markets, and suddenly you had economists thinking tariffs would push the US into recession," she says, pointing to the massive sell-off of US stocks, US bonds and the dollar.

So the sharp drops in the currency - as well as the recent sell-off in US government bonds, also generally considered a safe US asset - are unusual.