Gold Drivers
What moved gold: the dollar, real interest rates, inflation expectations, or something else.
Over the three months to Oct 16, gold moved +3.7%: the dollar, real rates and inflation expectations together pulled it down 2.6 points, while factors outside rates and the dollar added 6.3 points. As of 2026-10-16.
Since 2022 most of gold’s move has come from outside rates and the dollar. The likeliest cause is the jump in central-bank buying: about 1,000 tonnes a year since 2022, double the earlier pace (World Gold Council). It does not track gold quarter by quarter, so we show it as the unexplained trend rather than as a driver.
| Currency | Gold in that currencyTotal | From gold itselfGold | From the currencyCurrency |
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What this measures
Gold's move over one, three or twelve months is split into four parts that add up to the headline figure: the US dollar (DXY index), real interest rates (10-year inflation-protected Treasury yield), inflation expectations (10-year breakeven rate) and something else, everything those three do not capture, such as central-bank buying, geopolitical stress and investor flows.
How to read it
A bar to the right pushed gold up; a bar to the left pulled it down. When "something else" is the longest bar, forces outside rates and the dollar are driving gold. The quarterly chart shows how that mix has shifted, the old-rule chart tracks how strongly gold still reacts to real yields, and the currency table shows the same move for someone holding euros or lira.
How the split is made
It is a weekly regression of gold's returns on changes in the three drivers, refitted every week using only data that existed at the time, so there is no look-ahead. Each week's sensitivities are an even blend of a fit on the prior three years and a fit on the full history before that week. Each window's parts are the fitted sensitivities multiplied by what the drivers actually did over that window.
Drivers and sources
Real rates: the 10-year Treasury inflation-protected yield, FRED DFII10. Inflation expectations: the 10-year breakeven rate, FRED T10YIE. Dollar: the DXY dollar index. Gold returns come from the GLD exchange-traded fund; its fee is a small steady drag that lands in something else. The price in the headline is the COMEX front-month futures contract, which is a different series from GLD.