Methodology

Methodology: How the Colours and Data Work

This page lays out how the site makes its calls: where each card’s colour comes from, why each threshold is the number it is, where the data comes from, how often it updates, and when these judgments can fail. You should be able to check every colour yourself.

Last updated: October 11, 2026

— What this site does, and doesn’t do

Market North translates US macroeconomic data into a sense of direction: where an indicator stands now, and what that level has generally meant for US stocks, gold and silver.

It is an educational site — not a quotes site, and not investment advice. It does not forecast prices or tell you to buy or sell.

— How card colours are decided

The colour shows whether an indicator’s current level is a tailwind or a headwind for that asset:

Whether the reading rose or fell since last time does not set the colour. It appears as a small arrow line, for example “↓ −0.05 vs. prior · marginally bullish”. If real rates dip slightly, that is a marginal improvement for gold — but if they are still high, the card stays red.

A colour is not a price forecast

A colour answers one question: taken on its own, is this factor a tailwind or a headwind for the asset? Prices respond to many forces at once, and they can offset each other. Since late 2022, for example, real interest rates have risen while central banks bought gold heavily, and gold still set records. The real-rate card being red was not wrong; it simply says that one force is a headwind.

Thresholds are editorial judgments. We prefer cut-offs with economic meaning — the Fed’s 2% inflation goal, the neutral interest rate, the zero line for real rates, the Sahm recession rule — over raw historical percentiles, because percentiles depend on the window you pick. A 5.22% 10-year yield sits at the 98th percentile since 2006, but only the 49th since 1962.

Calls are made at the precision shown: if a card says 3.0%, it is judged as 3.0, so you can check the colour against the number on the card. Ranges include their lower bound and exclude their upper bound — “3.0–4.5%” means 3.0 ≤ x < 4.5.

A few cards are coloured by something other than the number shown, and the card says so: the fed funds rate is compared with the neutral rate (the FOMC’s median longer-run projection); payrolls use the 3-month average, because single months are too noisy; unemployment uses the Sahm recession indicator, because how far it has risen matters more than its level; the dollar uses its 3-month change, because the level of the broad dollar index has no economic meaning on its own. Inflation expectations are always gold — the card itself is about a double-edged sword.

The rule for every card

PageCardColour rule
US StocksFed Rate DecisionRelative to the neutral rate: < −0.5 Bullish · −0.5–+0.5 Two-way · ≥ +0.5 Bearish
US Stocks10Y Treasury Yield< 3.0% Bullish · 3.0–4.5% Two-way · ≥ 4.5% Bearish
US StocksConsumer Price Index< 2.5% Bullish · 2.5–3.5% Two-way · ≥ 3.5% Bearish
US StocksCore PCE< 2.3% Bullish · 2.3–3.0% Two-way · ≥ 3.0% Bearish
US StocksNonfarm Payrolls3-month average: < 0K Bearish · 0–75K Two-way · 75–250K Bullish · ≥ 250K Two-way
US StocksUnemployment RateSahm indicator: < 0.3 Bullish · 0.3–0.5 Two-way · ≥ 0.5 Bearish
US StocksGDP Growth< 0% Bearish · 0–1.0% Two-way · 1.0–3.5% Bullish · ≥ 3.5% Two-way
US StocksVolatility Index (VIX)< 20 Bullish · 20–30 Two-way · ≥ 30 Bearish
GoldReal Interest Rate< 0% Bullish · 0–1.5% Two-way · ≥ 1.5% Bearish
GoldBroad Dollar Index3-month change: < −2.0% Bullish · −2.0–+2.0% Two-way · ≥ +2.0% Bearish
GoldFed Hikes · Yields< 3.0% Bullish · 3.0–4.5% Two-way · ≥ 4.5% Bearish
GoldInflation ExpectationsAlways two-way: a move in either direction can help or hurt — see the explanation above.
SilverReal Interest Rate< 0% Bullish · 0–1.5% Two-way · ≥ 1.5% Bearish
SilverBroad Dollar Index3-month change: < −2.0% Bullish · −2.0–+2.0% Two-way · ≥ +2.0% Bearish

Grey cards have no reliable free live data source, or the data requires a licence. They keep their explanations and direction rules and link to the official tool, but show no number. We would rather say there is no data than show a sample value that looks real.

— Where the data comes from

All live figures come through FRED, run by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. The underlying data is published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Bureau of Economic Analysis and the Federal Reserve, and is US public-domain data — VIX excepted, see below.

“As of” tells you which period a figure covers; “published” or “revised” tells you the date that figure reached FRED. Monthly and quarterly data is often revised after release, and revised figures are labelled as such. A period the agency never published — such as October 2025 CPI, during the government shutdown — is marked “not published” rather than silently skipped.

The site does not provide market forecasts. Economists’ consensus forecasts are not available from free sources, and we will not invent them. Every comparison on the site is with the previous reading. Rules of thumb such as “above estimate → bearish” on the back of a card describe how markets have generally reacted.

VIX is shown only as calm / elevated / high stress, never as a number. VIX is copyright Cboe, and the permission FRED has to republish it does not extend to us, so we publish only our own reading derived from that data, with cut-offs at 20 and 30.

— How often it updates

The site pulls data from FRED on a schedule and caches it; it is not a live quote feed. New releases usually appear here the same day they are published, occasionally later. Every figure is labelled with the period it covers — rely on that label.

— Limits

Direction rules describe general tendencies, not certainties. The same data can move markets in very different ways depending on context — a strong jobs report is sometimes read as “good news is bad news”.

Thresholds are our judgment, not objective fact. Any change to a threshold will be recorded in the change log on this page.

— Change log