Suddenly all those safe haven assets that investment advisers have been pushing so enthusiastically over recent months don't look so safe after all.
You know the sort of things I mean. For the last year legions of brokers, wealth managers and self-proclaimed financial experts have been vigorously proclaiming their favourite alternative assets as the best refuge for investors in these times of economic turmoil.
We've been told that gold is the only secure store of value. We've heard that yuan deposits in Hong Kong can't lose. We've been advised to put our money into commodities like copper. And we've been told to buy safe haven currencies like the Swiss franc and the Singapore dollar. We've even been told to lay down fine wines as a leveraged play on China's insatiable thirst for conspicuous consumption.
After the last few weeks, however, all that advice looks sadly devalued. As concerns about the health of the US economy have grown and fears about an imminent Greek sovereign default have mounted, investors across the world have fled for safety.
But far from fleeing into the supposed safe haven assets that financial advisers have been promoting so assiduously, investors have dumped them in short order. Instead, they have sought shelter in the most traditional safe havens of all: the US dollar and the US Treasury market.
The sell-off has been brutal. At one point yesterday afternoon the gold price was down 20 per cent from the high it touched just three weeks ago.