Economy.

A basis point is one one-hundredth of a percent (0.01%), the unit used to describe small changes in interest rates and yields.

The gap in a single year when the government spends more than it collects in taxes; the opposite is a surplus.

The economy's repeating pattern of expansion and contraction, with recessions dated in the U.S. by the NBER.

Capital expenditure, or capex, is money a company spends on long-lived assets like factories, equipment, and technology to grow or maintain its business.

A survey-based gauge of how optimistic households feel about the economy and their finances, watched because mood can shape spending.

The government's main measure of inflation: how much a typical basket of consumer goods and services changes in price over time.

The crack spread is the profit margin refineries earn from turning a barrel of crude oil into refined products like gasoline and diesel.

Crude oil is unrefined petroleum pumped from the ground, the raw input that refineries turn into gasoline, diesel, and other fuels.

A general fall in prices across the economy. The opposite of inflation, and historically rarer.

The discount rate is the interest rate the Federal Reserve charges banks to borrow money directly from it, one of its tools for influencing credit.

People who want a job but have stopped looking because they believe none is available, so they fall outside the official unemployment rate.

A slowdown in the rate of inflation, where prices are still rising but more slowly. Not the same as deflation, where prices fall.

The dollar index measures the value of the US dollar against a basket of other major currencies, showing whether the dollar is broadly rising or falling.

The dot plot is a chart the Federal Reserve publishes showing where each official expects interest rates to be in the coming years, one dot per person.

The dual mandate is the Federal Reserve's two legal goals: keeping prices stable and employment as high as the economy can sustain.

The price of one currency in terms of another, which sets how far your money goes abroad and shapes the cost of imports and exports.

The overnight rate banks charge each other to lend reserves. The Fed's main lever on the economy.

The committee inside the Federal Reserve that sets the federal funds rate, the decision that ripples out to your savings, card, and mortgage rates.

The central bank of the United States, sets the policy interest rate that ripples through the economy.

How the government uses taxing and spending to steer the economy, the counterpart to the Fed's monetary policy of interest rates.

Fixed investment is spending by businesses and households on long-lasting assets like buildings, equipment, and homes, a key driver of economic growth.

Forward guidance is the Federal Reserve telling markets what it expects to do with interest rates in the future, to shape expectations before it acts.

GDP (gross domestic product) is the total dollar value of all the goods and services a country produces in a set period, usually a year or a quarter.

A geopolitical risk premium is the extra price built into assets like oil or gold when wars, tensions, or political shocks threaten supply or stability.

Import prices track what the US pays for goods bought from abroad, an early signal of inflation pressure feeding into the wider economy.

Inflation expectations are how much inflation consumers, businesses, and investors think there will be in the future, which can influence actual inflation.

The price of borrowing or lending money, expressed as a yearly percentage.

The weekly count of people filing for unemployment benefits, a timely read on layoffs that markets watch closely.

The labor force participation rate is the share of working-age people who are either employed or actively looking for work.

Median earnings are the midpoint of what workers earn: half make more, half make less, a truer picture of typical pay than the average.

Monetary policy is how a central bank, the Federal Reserve in the US, steers the economy by adjusting interest rates and the supply of money.

The money supply is the total amount of cash and easily spendable money circulating in an economy at a given time.

The total the federal government owes from years of borrowing to cover deficits, tracked in real time by the U.S. Treasury.

Nonfarm payrolls are the monthly count of US jobs added or lost outside farming, the headline number in the government's jobs report.

PCE inflation measures how fast prices rise across the goods and services people actually buy. It is the inflation gauge the Federal Reserve watches most.

A BLS measure of the prices producers receive for their goods and services, watched as an early signal of where consumer inflation may head.

Quantitative easing is when a central bank buys large amounts of bonds to push interest rates down and pump money into the economy.

The Federal Reserve shrinking its balance sheet by letting bonds it holds roll off, the reverse of quantitative easing.

A meaningful decline in economic activity that lasts more than a few months.

Refinery utilization is the share of a refinery's total capacity that is actually being used to process crude, a gauge of how hard refineries are running.

The refining margin is the profit a refinery makes per barrel after covering the cost of crude and the cost of processing it into fuels.

What you actually pay per gallon at the pump, built up from crude oil, refining, distribution, taxes, and the station's margin.

A soft landing is when a central bank slows inflation by raising interest rates without tipping the economy into a recession.

Stagflation is when an economy has high inflation and weak growth with high unemployment at the same time, an unusually painful combination.

A tariff is a tax a government puts on imported goods, which usually raises the price consumers pay for those goods.

A trade deficit is when a country imports more goods and services than it exports, so it buys more from the world than it sells.

The return an investor earns for lending to the U.S. government by buying a Treasury. It sets the floor for most other interest rates.

A broader unemployment rate that adds discouraged workers and involuntary part-timers to the official count, so it runs higher than the headline rate.

The unemployment rate is the share of people who want a job and are actively looking but do not have one, as a percentage of the labor force.

WTI, or West Texas Intermediate, is the main US benchmark grade of crude oil whose price is widely quoted as the reference for American oil.

A chart of Treasury yields from short maturities to long. The shape signals what the market expects about rates and growth.