Glossary

The vocabulary this page uses, in plain terms.

Real yield (or real rate): What a bond pays you after inflation is taken out. A bond paying 4% while prices rise 2% leaves you about 2% better off in buying power. This is the number gold competes with, because gold pays nothing at all.
Breakeven: The inflation rate at which an ordinary Treasury and an inflation-protected one would pay you the same. It is the bond market's forecast of inflation, readable straight off two prices.
TIPS: Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities. US government bonds whose principal rises with inflation, so the yield they quote is already a real yield.
Broad dollar index: The dollar measure this site actually scores: the Federal Reserve's nominal broad trade-weighted index, series DTWEXBGS, which compares the dollar against the currencies of every major US trading partner. It was set to 100 in January 2006 and currently reads about 120. Its better-known cousin, the DXY, tracks only six rich-world currencies and sits on a different base, around 100 — so the two can move together while quoting numbers about twenty points apart. Nothing on this page is scored off the DXY.
Haven: An asset people buy when they are frightened rather than when they expect a return. Gold, the dollar and US Treasuries all act as havens, at different times and for different fears.
Risk-off: A stretch when investors sell things that might grow and buy things that probably will not fall. The opposite is risk-on. Gold usually, though not always, does better in the first.
Positioning: How much of a market is already betting which way. It matters because crowded bets have to be unwound eventually, and the unwinding moves the price on its own, regardless of the news.
Managed money: Hedge funds and similar professional speculators, as classified by the CFTC. Their net position is the most-watched slice of the futures market.
Net long: Bullish bets minus bearish bets held by a group of traders. A large net long means most of the money is already positioned for a rise, which leaves less buying left to come.
Dot plot: A chart published four times a year in which each Federal Reserve official marks where they expect interest rates to go. It routinely moves markets more than the rate decision it accompanies.
Opportunity cost: What you give up by choosing one thing over another. Holding gold costs you the interest you would have earned holding bonds instead — which is why real yields matter so much on this page.
Basis point: One hundredth of a percentage point. A move from 4.00% to 4.25% is twenty-five basis points. Usually said as bips.
Drawdown: The fall from a peak to a trough, usually quoted as a percentage. It answers how bad it got, rather than where it ended.
Composite: The single number from minus 30 to plus 30 this site produces by weighing eight forces together. Zero is neutral. It describes conditions; it does not forecast the price.
Backtest: Running today's rules backwards over past data to see what they would have said at the time. Useful for checking whether a model is internally consistent. Not evidence that it predicts anything.
Information coefficient: A measure of how well a signal's readings line up with what actually happened next. Zero means no relationship at all. This site's composite scores close to zero at every horizon tested, which is published on the Track Record page rather than buried.
Regime: The market's ruling story — which force is in charge of gold's price right now. Switching regimes re-weights the eight forces by a different story.
Central bank: A country's official bank — the one that prints the money and sets interest rates. When central banks buy gold, they are swapping paper they printed for metal they cannot print.
ETF: A fund you can buy like a share. A gold ETF holds real bars in a vault and its price tracks them, so buying it is a bet on gold without owning a bar.
Tonne: A metric tonne — 1,000 kilograms, about 2,205 pounds. At gold's recent prices, a single tonne is worth on the order of a hundred-plus million dollars.
Bullish / bearish: Bullish means conditions point to the price going up; bearish, down. Bulls charge upward, bears swipe downward — that is the whole reason for the names.
The Fed (FOMC): The Federal Reserve, America's central bank. The FOMC is the committee inside it that votes on interest rates eight times a year.
Hawkish / dovish: Hawkish means leaning toward higher interest rates to fight inflation; dovish means leaning toward lower rates to help growth.
CPI and PCE: Two official measures of how fast prices are rising. CPI tracks a fixed basket of what households buy; PCE lets the basket shift as people swap to cheaper things, and is the one the Fed watches.
Strength: On this page, how hard one force is pushing right now, shown as pips on the card. It says how loud a force is, not which way it points — direction is the separate arrow.
Weight (weighting): How much say a force gets in the final number. The eight weights add to 100%, and changing regime changes the split.

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