Market Explainers
Short explainers on how markets, instruments and macro releases actually work.
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What Is the Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI)?
What PMI is, why 50 is the line between expansion and contraction, the difference between manufacturing and services surveys, what the sub-indices reveal, and why a timely survey often moves...
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What Is GDP and How Is It Measured?
What GDP is, the four components it is built from, the difference between real and nominal, why revisions matter as much as the first estimate, and why a backward-looking number...
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What Is OPEC and How Does It Influence Oil Prices?
What OPEC and OPEC+ are, how production quotas are set and enforced, why spare capacity matters more than the headline quota, what moves oil around a meeting, and the limits...
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What Is the Yield Curve and What Does It Signal?
What the yield curve is, the three shapes it takes, what an inversion has historically signalled and why it is a warning rather than a timer, how to read the...
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What Is the Federal Reserve and How Does It Set Policy?
What the Federal Reserve is, how the FOMC makes decisions, what the dual mandate means, the tools it uses, why the statement and press conference move markets more than the...
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What Is the US Nonfarm Payrolls (NFP) Report?
What the Nonfarm Payrolls report is, the three numbers in it, when it is released, why it is the most volatile scheduled event in currency markets, and how the same...
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What Is the Consumer Price Index (CPI)?
What the Consumer Price Index is, what goes in the basket, the difference between headline and core, when the US CPI is released, and why a print that matches the...
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What Is Inflation? How It Is Measured and What Causes It
What inflation is, how it is measured with a fixed basket, why headline and core differ, what CPI and PCE each capture, the two classic causes, and why the surprise...
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What Is an Earnings Report and Why Does It Move Stock Prices?
What an earnings report is, the three numbers in it that move the share, why a record quarter can send the price down, when reports land relative to market hours,...
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How Interest Rates Work and Why Central Banks Change Them
How interest rates work: what a central bank actually sets, how the policy rate reaches mortgages, bonds and currencies, why banks raise and cut, what hawkish and dovish mean, and...