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Every term on FinVolio explained: what it is, the economics behind it, and how to read it on the site. Look for the beside a figure for the short version.

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Statistics

How to read any figure on the site: points against per cent, seasonal adjustment, percentiles, estimates.

52-week and 10-year range: The lowest and highest values over a period, with a marker for where the latest value sits between them.
80% range: A band that the actual figure should land inside about four times in five. If actuals fall outside it more often than one time in five, the estimate is overconfident.
Consensus forecast and surprise: The median of professional economists' forecasts for a release. The surprise is the actual figure minus the consensus, and it is the surprise that moves markets.
FinVolio estimates: FinVolio's own estimate of what an upcoming release will show, from a stated statistical rule and, where available, an AI estimate with its reasoning. Not a consensus forecast and not advice.
Long-run average: The average of every reading in the series' history. A rough guide to what is normal, though economies change and some series never return to their old average.
Market reaction to a release: How prices moved on the day a figure was published: close to close for the Australian dollar, bond yields and shares.
Percentage points and basis points: The difference between two percentages. A rate rising from 4.00% to 4.25% is up 0.25 percentage points, or 25 basis points; it is not up 0.25%.
Percentile against history: Where the latest reading ranks among every reading since the series began. The 90th percentile means it is higher than 90% of past readings.
Release importance: How much a release usually moves markets. Rate decisions and the inflation, jobs, growth and ISM figures are high; spending, wages and producer prices medium; housing, sentiment and trade low.
Revisions: Changes to a figure after it was first published, as more complete data arrives. GDP and jobs figures are often revised by meaningful amounts.
Seasonally adjusted: A figure with the regular calendar pattern removed (Christmas, school holidays, harvests), so one month can be compared fairly with the next.
Year on year, month on month, quarter on quarter: How a figure compares with the same period a year earlier (y/y), or with the period just before (m/m, q/q). Year-on-year removes seasonal swings; shorter comparisons show turning points sooner.

Economy

What the economic indicators measure and how they connect: inflation, jobs, growth and the business cycle.

Business cycle: The recurring rise and fall of economic activity: expansion, slowdown, contraction and recovery.
Consumer sentiment: Surveys of how households feel about their finances and the economy. Low readings often precede weaker spending, though sentiment and spending can diverge.
Core PCE inflation: The Federal Reserve's preferred inflation measure: prices of everything US consumers buy, excluding food and energy.
Current account and trade balance: The trade balance is exports minus imports of goods and services. The current account adds income paid to and received from overseas. A deficit means the country is borrowing from, or selling assets to, the rest of the world.
Dwelling prices and building approvals: House and apartment prices, and the number of new homes approved for construction. Both respond strongly to interest rates.
GDP: Gross domestic product: the value of all goods and services produced in a country. Its growth rate is the broadest measure of how the economy is doing.
Household debt: What households owe, mostly mortgages. Australia's household debt is among the highest in the world relative to income.
Inflation (CPI): The rise in consumer prices, usually measured as the change in the Consumer Price Index over a year.
Inflation expectations: What households, businesses and economists expect inflation to be. Central banks watch them closely because expectations can become self-fulfilling.
Money supply (M1, M2, M3): The amount of money in the economy: cash and readily spendable deposits (M1) plus savings and term deposits (M2, or M3 in Australia).
Payrolls and jobless claims: Payrolls: the monthly change in the number of US jobs, the headline of the jobs report. Jobless claims: weekly new applications for unemployment benefit.
PMI and diffusion indices: A purchasing managers' index: a monthly survey of businesses where 50 separates expansion from contraction. Above 50, more firms report growth than decline.
Producer prices (PPI): Prices businesses receive for their output, or pay for inputs. Often an early signal for consumer inflation.
Recession: A significant, broad and lasting fall in economic activity. A common rough test is two quarters in a row of falling GDP.
Retail sales and household spending: How much households spend in shops and, more broadly, on goods and services. Consumer spending is the largest part of GDP in both Australia and the US.
Sahm rule: A recession signal: when the three-month average unemployment rate rises 0.5 points above its low of the past year, the US has almost always been in recession.
Terms of trade: The price of a country's exports relative to the price of its imports. When it rises, Australia earns more for what it sells and national income rises.
Trend growth: The pace an economy can grow at over the long run without overheating, set by growth in the workforce and productivity. About 2.5% a year for Australia and 2% for the US.
Trimmed mean inflation: The RBA's preferred inflation measure: the CPI with the most extreme price changes each period cut out, to show the underlying trend.
Unemployment rate: The share of people in the labour force who are out of work and actively looking for work.
Wage growth: How fast pay is rising. Australia uses the wage price index; the US uses average hourly earnings.

Rates and bonds

Policy rates, bond yields and what the yield curve and credit spreads are saying.

Credit spread: The extra yield companies pay over government bonds. Widening spreads mean lenders are more worried about defaults.
Government bond yield: The annual return from buying a government bond today and holding it to maturity. Yields rise when bond prices fall.
Mortgage rates: The interest rate on home loans. Australian variable rates follow the RBA cash rate; US 30-year fixed rates follow the 10-year Treasury yield.
Neutral interest rate: The policy rate that neither speeds up nor slows down the economy. It cannot be observed directly; central banks estimate it.
Quantitative easing and tightening: Central banks buying bonds to push long-term interest rates down (QE), or letting them run off to reverse it (QT). Used when the policy rate is already near zero.
RBA cash rate: The interest rate the Reserve Bank of Australia targets for overnight loans between banks. It anchors almost every other interest rate in Australia.
Real policy rate: The policy rate minus underlying inflation. Positive means money is dear in real terms (policy is tight); negative means it is cheap (policy is loose).
US federal funds rate: The Federal Reserve's policy rate: the overnight rate between US banks, set as a target range. The world's most important interest rate.
Yield curve and inversion: The gap between long-term and short-term bond yields. When short yields rise above long ones (an inversion), recessions have often followed.

Markets

Currencies, commodities, share indices and the gauges of market stress.

Australian dollar (AUD/USD): How many US dollars one Australian dollar buys. It rises with commodity prices, Australian interest rates and global risk appetite.
Carry trade: Borrowing in a low-interest-rate currency to invest in a higher-yielding one, earning the gap. Profitable while currencies are calm, painful when they unwind.
Commodity prices: Prices for raw materials such as iron ore, coal, gas, gold and oil. Australia's income rises and falls with them.
End-of-day prices: The closing price for each trading day. FinVolio's share indices and commodities are end-of-day; crypto is live.
Front-month futures: The futures contract closest to expiry, the most traded and the standard quoted price for commodities such as gold and oil.
Iron ore: The raw material for steel, and Australia's largest export by value. Its price depends mostly on Chinese steel production.
Prices in A$ or US$: Most commodities and coins are priced in US dollars. In Australian dollars, the price also moves with the exchange rate.
Risk-on and risk-off: Shorthand for markets moving together on confidence. Risk-on: shares, commodities, crypto and the Australian dollar rise. Risk-off: they fall while bonds, the US dollar and gold firm.
Safe-haven assets: Assets investors buy in a crisis: US Treasury bonds, the US dollar, the Japanese yen, the Swiss franc and gold.
Share index: A single number tracking a basket of shares, such as the S&P 500 or the Nikkei 225. Shown in points; what matters is the percentage change.
Trade-weighted index (TWI): The Australian dollar measured against a basket of trading partners' currencies, weighted by trade. A better gauge of the dollar's overall strength than AUD/USD alone.
US dollar index (DXY): The US dollar measured against a basket of six major currencies, dominated by the euro. A strong dollar tightens financial conditions worldwide.
VIX volatility index: The volatility S&P 500 options are pricing for the next 30 days, as an annualised percentage. Often called the fear gauge: it rises when markets fall.

Investing

Reading a price: volatility, drawdowns, trends, momentum, returns and managing risk.

Capital gains tax (CGT): Tax on the profit when you sell an asset for more than you paid. In Australia, individuals who held the asset for more than 12 months pay tax on only half the gain.
Compounding: Earning returns on past returns. At 7% a year, money roughly doubles every 10 years; time matters more than almost anything else.
Diversification: Spreading money across investments that do not all move together, so one bad outcome does less damage. The closest thing in investing to a free lunch.
Dividend yield: Annual dividends per share divided by the share price. A 4% yield pays $4 a year for every $100 invested, before franking credits.
Drawdown and distance from high: The fall from a previous peak to a later low. The largest fall in the past year shows how deep the worst stretch was.
Earnings per share (EPS): A company's profit for a period divided by its number of shares. The figure analysts forecast and companies report each results season.
ETFs and index funds: Funds that hold a basket of investments, often tracking an index, and trade on the share market like a single share. A cheap way to own a whole market.
Franking credits: A credit for company tax already paid on Australian dividends, which the investor can offset against their own tax and, in many cases, receive as a refund.
Leverage: Using borrowed money (or derivatives) to hold more than your own capital. It magnifies gains and losses alike.
Liquidity: How easily something can be bought or sold quickly without moving its price. Cash and large shares are liquid; property and small companies are not.
Long/short investing: Owning assets expected to rise (long) while selling borrowed assets expected to fall (short), so returns depend less on the market's overall direction.
Market capitalisation: A company's share price multiplied by the number of its shares: what the market says the whole company is worth.
Momentum and relative strength: The tendency of assets that have risen most over recent months to keep outperforming for a while. Relative strength ranks markets by their returns.
Moving averages (50-day, 200-day): The average closing price over the last 50 or 200 trading days, redrawn each day. Shows the trend with the daily noise smoothed out.
Options: Contracts giving the right, not the obligation, to buy (a call) or sell (a put) an asset at a set price before a set date. Used to express a view with limited downside or to hedge.
Position sizing: Deciding how much to put in each holding so that no single position can do outsized damage, usually by scaling size to volatility.
Price return and total return: Price return counts only the change in price. Total return adds dividends or interest. Over long periods the difference is large.
Price-to-earnings ratio (P/E): Share price divided by earnings per share: how many dollars investors pay for each dollar of annual profit. A rough gauge of how expensive a share or market is.
Real return: A return after inflation. A 6% return with 4% inflation is about a 2% real return: the gain in what your money can buy.
Results (earnings) season: The weeks when most listed companies report profits. In Australia, February and August; in the US, the weeks after each quarter ends.
RSI (relative strength index): A 0–100 gauge of how strong recent gains have been against recent losses, over 14 days. Above 70 is conventionally called overbought; below 30, oversold.
Short selling: Borrowing shares and selling them, aiming to buy them back later at a lower price. Profits when prices fall; losses are unlimited in theory if they rise.
Superannuation: Australia's compulsory retirement savings system. Employers pay a share of wages (12% from July 2025) into a fund that invests for members until retirement.
Technical analysis: Reading price and volume patterns to time trades. Professional long/short investors mostly use it to time ideas that come from fundamentals.
Volatility: How much a price typically moves, measured as the annualised standard deviation of daily returns. 20% means a typical year's move is about 20% either way.

Crypto

How crypto prices are quoted and what makes them move.

24-hour change (crypto): Crypto trades every day, all day, so changes are measured over the past 24 hours rather than since a market close. FinVolio shows it in US dollar terms, as exchanges publish it.
Bitcoin: The first cryptocurrency, with a fixed supply of 21 million coins. Traded around the clock and far more volatile than shares.
Bitcoin halving: The roughly four-yearly cut in half of the number of new bitcoin issued with each block. The most recent was in April 2024; the next is due around 2028.
Funding rate (perpetual futures): The periodic payment between long and short holders of crypto perpetual futures that keeps their price near the spot price. High positive funding means traders are crowded on the long side.
Spot bitcoin ETFs: Exchange-traded funds that hold actual bitcoin, so investors can own it through a share market account. US spot bitcoin ETFs launched in January 2024; ASX-listed versions followed.
Stablecoins: Crypto tokens designed to hold a steady value, usually one US dollar, backed by cash and short-term government bonds. The plumbing of crypto trading.
Trading volume: The value of an asset traded over a period. Higher volume means more liquidity: it is easier to buy or sell without moving the price.