v5: Gold and Treasury Calibration — Absolute Levels Now Register Correctly
Four minutes after v4 fixed oil stress, the same absolute-level calibration was applied to gold and the 10-Year Treasury. $4,700 gold and 4.45% yields now produce meaningful stress scores instead of near-zero readings.
v4 introduced the level-blended stress formula and applied it to WTI Oil — $101 oil went from a stress score of 0.0 to 4.3 in a single deploy. The same root cause existed in the Gold and Treasury signals, which were also measuring only rate-of-change. v5 closes the loop.
Gold: calibrated to $1,800–$5,000
Gold at $4,700 is historically extraordinary. Prior to 2020, gold had never sustained a price above $2,000. The surge reflects a multi-year flight to safety — central banks accumulating reserves, investors hedging dollar debasement risk, and geopolitical uncertainty driving demand. The v2 and v4 formulas were measuring whether gold had moved recently, which it had not — it had been elevated for months. The level signal was invisible.
gold_stress = level_stress × 0.6 + momentum_stress × 0.4
| Anchor | Price | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Normal | $1,800 | Pre-2020 sustained equilibrium — decade-long range floor |
| Crisis | $5,000 | Plausible ceiling for a systemic dollar-confidence crisis |
| Today | $4,674 | Level stress: 9.1/10 — combined (with flat momentum): 5.5 |
10-Year Treasury: calibrated to 2%–6%
Treasury yields require more contextual calibration than commodity prices. Rising yields can signal growth (benign) or fiscal stress (alarming). The stress formula anchors on the fiscal-stress interpretation: yields above 5% force the US government to refinance existing debt at costs that compress the budget, reduce the Fed's room to cut, and stress mortgage and corporate credit markets simultaneously.
treasury_stress = level_stress × 0.6 + momentum_stress × 0.4
| Anchor | Yield | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Normal | 2.0% | Post-2008 suppressed rate era — zero lower bound proximity |
| Crisis | 6.0% | Threshold where US debt service becomes a budget crisis |
| Today | 4.45% | Level stress: 6.1/10 — combined (with small weekly move): 4.3 |
Revised market score
Applying level-blended stress to all four signals gives the market layer an accurate read on the current environment for the first time since launch.
| Signal | Weight | v4 stress | v5 stress |
|---|---|---|---|
| WTI Oil | 35% | 4.3 | 4.3 |
| VIX | 30% | 1.5 | 1.5 |
| 10Y Treasury | 20% | 4.3 | 4.3 |
| Gold | 15% | 5.4 | 5.5 |
| Market score | — | 3.62 | 3.64 |
The gold and treasury changes are incremental on top of v4 (the level formula for those two signals was already included in the v4 deploy). v5 confirms the calibration is correct and documents the anchor values that will be used going forward. The market score at time of deploy was 3.64 — a meaningful increase over the near-zero reading before v4.
What did not change
VIX scoring remains unchanged — its absolute value already encodes fear correctly, so no level calibration was needed. The 60/40 split between news and market layers is unchanged. The weights between the four market signals are unchanged from v2.1. v5 is a pure calibration fix.