The classic long-cycle ratios — gold to silver, the Dow priced in gold, the S&P against the money supply, home prices to income — plus any custom pair, with the Nowflation gauge available as a deflator to turn nominal charts real.
Ratios cancel the money illusion: an index at record nominal highs can be flat for a decade priced in gold or M2. That is the entire argument for real (inflation-adjusted) analysis, made visually — and it's why an inflation site keeps a ratio lab.
A ratio chart divides one price by another, so the unit of account drops out: the Dow in ounces of gold, the S&P 500 in units of M2, a barrel of oil in MMBtu of gas. It is the visual case for real analysis — an index at record nominal highs can be flat for a decade priced in gold or money supply — which is why an inflation site keeps a ratio lab. 7 classic pairs are precomputed from weekly closes since 2015 (index ratios since 2016, the FRED history limit for the S&P and the Dow), with the one NBER recession in that window shaded, plus a custom-pair tool.
| Ratio | What it is | Now | A year ago | Five years ago | Range since start | Weekly points |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gold-to-Silver Ratio | ounces of silver per ounce of gold — the classic hard-asset stress gauge | 72.9622 | 84.6699 | 75.7334 | 49.1419 to 119.8708 (from January 2, 2015) | 616 |
| Gold-to-Oil Ratio | barrels of WTI per ounce of gold — fear against industrial demand | 42.2248 | 67.9185 | 21.4912 | 15.5424 to 102.4557 (from January 2, 2015) | 616 |
| Copper-to-Gold Ratio | the growth signal: copper (the economy) against gold (fear); rising is risk-on | 0.0016 | 0.0012 | 0.0027 | 0.0011 to 0.0027 (from January 2, 2015) | 616 |
| Oil-to-Natural-Gas Ratio | WTI per MMBtu of Henry Hub — the energy complex's internal spread | 31.7779 | 18.9633 | 15.2089 | 9.7022 to 51.9517 (from January 2, 2015) | 616 |
| S&P 500-to-Gold Ratio | stocks priced in gold — is the bull market real or monetary? | 1.8319 | 1.638 | 2.5286 | 1.3065 to 2.6401 (from October 21, 2016) | 522 |
| Dow-to-Gold Ratio | the century-long valuation pendulum, on the last decade of data | 12.4375 | 11.3688 | 19.9597 | 9.1982 to 22.2621 (from October 21, 2016) | 522 |
| S&P 500-to-M2 Ratio | the S&P 500 against the money supply — valuation net of money creation | 0.3281 | 0.2945 | 0.2113 | 0.1437 to 0.3346 (from October 21, 2016) | 522 |
The gold-to-silver ratio rises when investors want the monetary metal and not the industrial one — above 80 has marked stress, below 50 speculative appetite for silver. Copper-to-gold is the cleanest growth signal in commodities and tracks the 10-year yield closely; it falls when recession fears outrun industrial demand. Gold-to-oil separates a fear bid from an energy shock: a rising ratio means gold is being bought for reasons oil does not share. The S&P-to-gold and Dow-to-gold ratios ask whether equity gains are real or a weaker unit of account; the S&P-to-M2 ratio asks the same question against the money supply, so a flat line there is a market that only kept pace with money creation.
The lower section restates gold, silver and WTI in constant purchasing power. The official-CPI deflator expresses each price in today's dollars using the monthly CPI, which lands about six weeks after the price; the Nowflation deflator uses the daily market-price index (January 2018 = 100), measured from today's prices rather than last month's survey, so "Nowflation-real" is a view no other site publishes. Gold: nominal $4,181.10 on October 16, 2026, $4,181.10 in CPI-real terms, $4,179.91 Nowflation-real (Nowflation-real series from January 5, 2018, when it stood at $1,805.64). Silver: nominal $57.31 on October 16, 2026, $57.30 in CPI-real terms, $57.29 Nowflation-real (Nowflation-real series from January 5, 2018, when it stood at $23.60). WTI Crude Oil: nominal $99.02 on October 16, 2026, $99.02 in CPI-real terms, $98.99 Nowflation-real (Nowflation-real series from January 5, 2018, when it stood at $83.90). Today's real and nominal values coincide by construction — the deflator is 1 at the latest date — and diverge going back.
The Nowflation deflator is the Gauge's own index level (136.7 today, 36.6% above January 2018), so every real chart here is the same measurement of prices applied to an asset rather than to a basket. Sources: exchange settlement prices from the market feed, the S&P 500 and Dow via FRED, M2 from the Federal Reserve, CPI from the BLS, and the Nowflation daily index. None of these ratios feeds the Gauge; they are context for it.