Before allocating anything, find out which of these series you can actually read

Every asset allocation argument is a comparison of returns across asset classes, and it is worth checking whether those returns exist in a form anyone can verify before making one. This page is that check. Some are published free, officially and daily, back sixty years; one is published by a trade body back to 1968; one comes from a commercial site and is labelled as such; and the most important one of all — equities — could not be obtained at all. The result is an inventory, with everything measurable measured and everything missing named.

The inventory, with the grade of each source

Eight things an allocation argument might need. Seven of them can be read; the eighth is the one every such argument is really about.

The last row is not a gap that better searching would close. Equity indices are commercial products; no statistical agency publishes one, and the methodology documents of the major providers have returned 403 to this site on previous attempts. So the asset class that dominates every allocation discussion is the one with the weakest free public evidence base, and a page that quietly fills it from a convenient chart is doing the opposite of what this area is for.

The part that is fully documented: rates

Rates are the strongest case in the inventory, because the primary publisher serves them daily, free, for sixty-four years, and because they decompose. Here is the whole set as read.

The single most useful line is the third, and it is a subtraction anyone can repeat: a ten-year nominal yield of 4.70% minus a ten-year breakeven of 2.26% gives an implied real yield of 2.43%. For most of the previous decade that number was negative — below zero on 955 days between 10 August 2011 and 28 April 2022. Any allocation argument written during those years and any written now are addressing different arithmetic, and the difference is published and free.

The two policy rates are worth keeping distinct from the market yields beside them. The US effective overnight rate of 3.63% is 1.07 points below the ten-year; the ECB’s two key rates are 0.15 points apart from each other on the same day. None of these is a rate at which any household or business borrows, and none of the publishers claims otherwise.

The part that is measurable with caveats: two commodities

Two commodity series are stored on this site and both were drawn on 11 August 2026. Their compound rates are computed below, and every one of them is a price change: no storage cost, no roll cost, no income, no tax, no currency effect.

The first two rows carry a trap worth spelling out. The gold price on 1 April 1968 was not a market price in the modern sense: the dollar was convertible into gold at an official rate until 15 August 1971, so a compound rate computed from 1968 measures partly the end of that arrangement rather than the behaviour of a traded asset. Starting the calculation from the first observation after that date raises the rate from 8.47% to 8.75% a year. Neither figure is wrong; they answer different questions, and a page that gives one without the other has hidden a choice.

The oil row has a different problem, disclosed rather than smoothed. Its source is a commercial financial website, not an exchange or a statistical agency, and it is a front-month futures series, so holding it would have required rolling contracts at a cost this page does not know and cannot estimate. Its 3.69% a year is therefore the change in a quoted price, not a return anyone could have earned. Its low is $16.94 on 24 April 2020 and its high $139.64 on 26 June 2008; the latest reading is 41.2% below that high.

The volatility gap between the two is large and is computed over the whole of each file: the weekly standard deviation of the gold series is 2.66% over 3,033 weekly changes, and of the oil series 6.79%over 931 — a factor of 2.6. The two series cover different periods and different numbers of observations, so this is a comparison of two files rather than a controlled test, and it is stated as such.

Five questions to put to any allocation argument

• Which series, from which publisher? A Treasury yield from the Federal Reserve and a futures close from a commercial website are not the same kind of evidence, and this page grades every line rather than levelling them.
• Price or total return? Everything above is a price. Income, costs, taxes, currency and rolling are all absent, and each of them can move a long-run figure by more than the difference being argued about.
• From which date, and why that one? The gold rate moves from 8.47% to 8.75% depending on whether the calculation starts in 1968 or after August 1971.
• Nominal or real? The ten-year yield is 4.70% nominal and 2.43% real on the implied measure, and the twelve-month change in consumer prices was 3.36% for July 2026.
• What is missing? Here it is the largest asset class of all, and the honest thing is to name the hole rather than to fill it.

What these sources do not say

• No equity figure of any kind appears here. No index level, return or weight, because no free source publishing its construction was obtained.
• Every commodity figure is a price change, not a return. Storage, rolling, income, costs, taxes and currency effects are all absent.
• One source on this page is commercial, not official, and it is graded as such on its own line rather than levelled with the rest.
• No correlation between any two of these series is computed. They cover different periods at different frequencies, and a correlation across mismatched windows would be an artefact.
• No allocation, weighting or rebalancing rule. Nothing read for this page contains one, and none is offered.
• No forecast of any rate, price or return. Every figure describes a period that has already closed.

How to verify this yourself

1. Download DGS10 and T10YIE, join them by date and subtract. The latest result should be about 2.43.
2. Count the days where that subtraction is below zero. You should get 955, first on 10 August 2011.
3. Take the gold series, divide the last value by the first and raise the result to the power of one over 58.36. You should get about 1.0847.
4. Repeat starting from the first observation after 15 August 1971. The answer should rise to about 1.0875.
5. Take the oil series and find its maximum and minimum. They should be 26 June 2008 and 24 April 2020.
6. Try to obtain a long, free, official series of US equity total returns from a statistical agency, and note what you find.

Where to go next on this site

• Interest rates and asset prices — the rate side measured in full, and the correlation this site does not publish.
• Inflation and deflation — the index that turns every nominal figure above into a real one.
• Sector rotation — the same missing-equity-data problem, tested on production instead.
• All macroeconomics guides — the area index, one click away.

Sources opened for this page

Each source below was opened and read on 13 August 2026. Verified on 13 August 2026.

• Vextor Capital — docs/FONTI-DIFFICILI.md, register of sources that did not open, read 13 August 2026Used for: the recorded outcomes of previous attempts by this site to open index provider methodologies: S&P Dow Jones 403, CRSP 403 or HTML served in place of the PDF, and Morningstar 403 or 404 — which is why no equity index construction could be read and no equity figure appears on this page. Read 13 August 2026.
• Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis — FRED series DGS10, T10YIE and DFFUsed for: the 16,137 daily ten-year values from 2 January 1962, the 5,907 breakeven values from 2 January 2003, the readings of 4.70%, 2.26% and 3.63% for 11 and 12 August 2026, and the 955 days on which the implied real ten-year yield was below zero between 10 August 2011 and 28 April 2022. Read 13 August 2026.
• European Central Bank Data Portal — key interest rate series, and Vextor Capital's stored joined series app/data/storico/ecb-rates.jsonUsed for: the main refinancing rate of 2.40% and the deposit facility rate of 2.25% for 13 August 2026, and the joined daily record of 10,084 observations and 60 changes from 1 January 1999. Read 13 August 2026.
• London Bullion Market Association — gold price, stored as app/data/storico/gold.json and drawn 11 August 2026Used for: the 3,034 weekly points from 1 April 1968 to 10 August 2026, the first value of $37.70 and the latest of $4,324.45, the first value after 15 August 1971 of $43.05 on 17 August 1971, the maximum of $5,209.70 on 10 March 2026, and the weekly standard deviation of 2.66% over 3,033 changes. Read 13 August 2026.
• Crude oil front-month futures, stored as app/data/storico/oil.json and drawn 11 August 2026 from a commercial financial websiteUsed for: the 932 weekly points from 23 August 2000 to 10 August 2026, the first value of $32.05 and the latest of $82.13, the maximum of $139.64 on 26 June 2008 and the minimum of $16.94 on 24 April 2020, and the weekly standard deviation of 6.79% over 931 changes — all reported with the source graded as commercial rather than official. Read 13 August 2026.
• Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis — FRED series CPIAUCNS, and the Federal Reserve target rate tableUsed for: the twelve-month change in consumer prices of 3.36% for July 2026, and the target range of 3.50 to 3.75% set on 11 December 2025 with the table's last-update stamp of 12 December 2025. Read 13 August 2026.

Change log

• 13 August 2026— page rewritten from scratch against four FRED series, the ECB Data Portal, the Federal Reserve target rate table and two stored commodity files, all opened or drawn that day. Removed from the previous version: model portfolios with percentage weights by economic regime, supported by nothing; long-run asset class returns for equities, bonds and commodities presented in one table as if they came from comparable sources; a gold return quoted from a single start date with no note that the price was official until August 1971; a commodity futures quote presented as an investable return; and correlations between series covering different periods at different frequencies.

Vextor Capital is not authorised under MiFID II as an investment firm, is not registered with the SEC, FINRA, the CFTC or the NFA, is not an investment adviser, holds no position in any instrument named on this page, and receives no payment from any bank, broker, exchange, index provider or data vendor. Every outbound link on this page points to a statistical agency, a central bank or a public data series.