Since 1973, WTI has traversed seven major shocks. Each combines in variable doses three ingredients — physical supply constraint, structural demand pull, financial stress — whose identification enables reading the nature of the shock rather than its magnitude alone. TL;DR…
Since 2011, WTI has structurally priced $3 to $5 below Brent. This discount is not anecdotal: it results from three mechanical factors — U.S. export capacity, Cushing logistics, pricing geography — that clarify what each benchmark actually measures. TL;DR WTI…
WTI is a precise object: light sweet crude at 39.6 degrees API and 0.24% sulfur, priced at Cushing, Oklahoma, tracked by FRED’s DCOILWTICO series at daily frequency since 1986. These three technical coordinates condition every macroeconomic reading that follows. TL;DR…
WTI, the U.S. barrel priced at Cushing, is not just a price — it is a macroeconomic barometer that compresses physical supply constraints, inflationary transmission, and geopolitical risk premium into a single daily signal. TL;DR WTI's grip on U.S. inflation…
Crossing $3,000 per ounce in March 2025 is a major media inflection point, but analytically it does not reduce to a threshold — it signals the coexistence of three distinct macro readings that no available data can yet arbitrate among.…
Net seller until 2009, the global official sector became a structural gold buyer from 2022 onward, with annual volumes — roughly 1,080 tonnes in 2022 — doubling those of the prior decade. TL;DR Net seller until 2009, the global official…
Since the unilateral end of dollar-gold convertibility announced by Nixon on August 15, 1971, gold prices have experienced four major cycles and three regime shifts, each carrying its own macro reading. TL;DR Four cycles and three regime shifts have shaped…
The inverse correlation between gold and the 10-year TIPS yield is empirically documented over nearly thirty years, but it has never been a stable coefficient: it deforms and breaks according to macro regimes. TL;DR Gold's usually inverse tie to ten-year…
The inverse correlation between gold and the dollar is not a statistical coincidence but an international arbitrage mechanic anchored in the fact that gold is quoted in dollars on every global market. TL;DR Because gold trades in dollars worldwide, its…
The global reference gold price is not a single live datapoint but an institutional fixing produced twice daily in London, calibrated against a precise bar format and a precise delivery standard. TL;DR What retail sites show as one live gold…
