Data sources

We judge every rule on one end-of-day price from one named source, and every figure we print carries the date it describes. Any other price we show is a proxy: it tells you distance and direction, but it cannot fire a rule.

Which close counts

Instrument	Published close	Where it comes from
Brent crude futures	Named ICE contract settlement for scoring	ICE daily records; exchange expiry dates identify the contract. Any vendor reading is labeled separately.
WTI crude futures	Exchange settlement or a labeled published close	NYMEX settlement records or a direct relay. Yahoo and Barchart close fields are not assumed to be exchange settlements.
Gold and silver	Named COMEX settlement for scoring; reported futures closes for context	Exchange records or a direct settlement relay. A vendor close and a spot quote cannot settle an official-settlement test.
Currencies and the dollar index	The benchmark and session named in the edition	A vendor daily close, an explicitly timed morning reading, or a FRED reference rate. FRED noon FX is a different observation from a market close.
Stock indices	Published daily close	The index provider or attributed Yahoo daily history, with the completed session identified.
Fed rate expectations	Probabilities derived from named 30-day fed funds contracts	The local derivation uses futures observations with their source and session. A settlement-based result is separate from a live capture.
US Treasury yields	The named yield benchmark	Treasury par yields, FRED constant-maturity series, and the vendor ^TNX yield index are distinct. The edition identifies which reading it uses; nominal and real yields are kept separate.
Economic and company data	A dated release or filing, with its reporting period	BLS, EIA, issuer filings and other agencies of record. Observation periods, release dates and later revisions are separate.

We call a price a settlement only when it comes from the exchange or a direct relay of the exchange’s figure. When we rebuild a settlement from vendor pages, we call it a reported settlement and give the range the vendors show.

Timing

Each daily issue is written before the US market opens, and times are Eastern. Prices from completed sessions are closes or settlements. A price taken that morning is labeled as a morning reading, and it cannot fire or fail a rule. Each issue says which day its US-market prices come from.

If a figure has not updated since the last issue, we keep the last figure and print its date. We do not present an old figure as today’s.

Weekends and holidays

Weekend issues open with a line saying that every market price shown is Friday’s close or settlement unless noted. Some markets trade when others are shut: Gulf stock markets trade on Sunday, for instance. So when we say markets have not yet reacted, we name the market. Prices from thin holiday trading are given as a range, not an exact figure.

A test that needs a level to hold for several sessions counts completed sessions only. A morning reading does not count as a session, and whether a day qualifies is decided at its settlement.

Revisions and corrections

Sources sometimes revise a number after we print it. We correct it prominently only when the revision changes a conclusion, changes a lane’s state, or changes what we told readers. A smaller revision gets at most one sentence where it applies, or no mention in the daily issue, and every revision is logged in our fact ledger. When we correct a figure we published, the correction runs in the free part of the issue and gives the old figure, the new figure, and the size of the error.