Frequently asked questions

It means that under the scenario you have dialled in, the historical forces acting on that asset are strongly positive — several tailwinds, few headwinds. It is not a predicted return, a price target, or a probability. Think of scores as a ranking of relative exposure: +80 versus +20 says "history suggests the first asset is far better positioned in this scenario," nothing more precise than that. The methodology page shows exactly how scores are computed.

Historically: defence stocks, gold, oil and gas, agricultural commodities, cybersecurity, and safe-haven currencies like the US dollar and Swiss franc. What suffers: airlines, tourism, luxury goods, and assets near the conflict. The war guide covers the episodes behind this pattern.

The classic refuges are government bonds (which gain when central banks cut rates), cash, and defensive sectors — consumer staples, healthcare, utilities. The classic casualties are banks, discretionary retail, high-yield bonds and commercial property. See the recession guide for the 2008 case study.

Mostly, but not every week. Gold's long-run record in wars, inflations and crises is the strongest of any asset — yet in the acute panic phase of 2008 it fell about 25%, because leveraged investors sold everything liquid to raise cash. It then rallied to new highs. Gold protects over the episode; it can still disappoint over the month.

It depends entirely on which crisis. In recessions, panics and deflationary shocks, cash is king — it holds value while everything else goes on sale. In an inflation surge, cash is the quiet casualty: at 8% inflation, an idle dollar loses half its purchasing power in about nine years. This is why the dashboard scores cash positively in most scenarios but sharply negatively on the inflation slider.

Because that is how it has traded so far. Through 2020's crash and the 2022 tightening cycle, cryptocurrency behaved like a high-beta risk asset — falling harder than stocks when fear rose — rather than like digital gold. It has shown genuine capital-flight demand in specific situations, which is why its war weight is only mildly negative. A longer track record could change this assessment.

Yes — that is the point of sliders rather than buttons. Real crises overlap: wars cause energy shortages, energy shortages cause inflation, inflation can cause recessions. Stack the sliders and the model combines the effects (with diminishing returns near the extremes, so rankings stay readable). Try the stagflation preset for the classic nasty combination.

No. Crisis Lighthouse is an educational thinking tool. It knows nothing about your circumstances, tax situation, time horizon or existing holdings — and it deliberately ignores valuations, policy responses and timing (see what the model ignores). Use it to structure your thinking and your questions, then talk to a qualified financial adviser before acting.

Anyone who wants to reason more clearly about uncertainty: investors stress-testing their assumptions, students learning how asset classes interact, journalists and policymakers looking for the historical pattern behind a headline, or the simply curious. More on the about page.

The sensitivity weights are judgment calls grounded in documented crisis episodes — 1973, 1979, the 1970s inflation, 2008, 2020, 2022 and others — all discussed in the scenario guides. The full weight matrix is published on the methodology page; nothing is hidden.