The short answer
They move with gold on the same day but did not predict it. Gold's daily moves were strongly opposite to real-yield changes in 2021-23 (correlation about -0.5), but the link fell to -0.03 in 2025 as central-bank buying took over. Yesterday's change in real yields, the dollar or the volatility gauges predicted nothing about the next day (correlations within plus or minus 0.09), and using them to filter trend trades did not help.
What we tested
- Markets
- XAUUSD, XAGUSD; EURUSD, GBPUSD, USDJPY, AUDUSD, USDCAD, USDCHF, NZDUSD
- Period
- 2021-23 to find, 2024-26 to judge
- Data from the US Federal Reserve's FRED database: 10-year real yield, broad dollar index, VIX, gold volatility index (GVZ), monthly 10-year yields for the US and six other countries.
- Filters on daily trend trades (keep a trade only when real yields, the dollar, the rate gap or fear agree), and next-day signals from the previous day's change. No look-ahead: each value used only from the second trading day after its date.
Results
| Year | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Correlation | -0.44 | -0.53 | -0.52 | -0.31 | -0.03 | -0.24 |
| Test | 2021-23 | 2024-26 |
|---|---|---|
| Gold/silver trend, no filter | -0.05R | +0.10R |
| Only when real yields agree | -0.03R | +0.10R |
| Only when the dollar agrees | -0.07R | +0.07R |
| FX trend, no filter | -0.04R | -0.12R |
| FX trend, only when the rate gap agrees | -0.03R | -0.13R |
What it means
- On 22 Oct 2026 real yields fell while gold fell: forced selling, not rates, drove that day. Drivers that explain gold over months can be silent over days.
- Filtering metals trend trades by a rising gold volatility index looked good once, but swapped sign with the lookback window: noise.
Limits of this test
- Daily and monthly data only; intraday reactions to yield moves were not tested.
Frequently asked questions
Do real yields drive the gold price?
Over 2021-23 gold moved strongly opposite to real yields on the same day, but the link nearly vanished in 2025, and the previous day's change in real yields did not predict the next day's gold move in our test.
How every test on these pages works
- Prices: the broker's own bars from an FTMO cTrader account. Fills are simulated minute by minute on one-minute bars; when one minute touches both the stop and the target, the stop is assumed to fill first.
- Costs: the broker's bid/ask spread measured by hour of day, commission per market, and the broker's own overnight swap rates for anything held past the daily rollover.
- Periods: year 1 = 24 Oct 2024 to 23 Oct 2025, year 2 = 24 Oct 2025 to 24 Oct 2026. Daily rules also use Dec 2020 to Oct 2024 ("2021-24"). Rules are written down before testing and are not tuned on the period that judges them.
- Controls: every rule is compared with entries that have no reason behind them (random sides, random days, or the same rule at fake levels), so a result has to beat chance, not just be positive.
- R is the trade's risk (entry to stop). An average of +0.10R means the average trade made a tenth of what it risked; -0.10R means it lost a tenth.
The full results for the rules RezSync Algo trades, by market and risk profile with every trade downloadable, are in the backtest report.
Related research
Research, not financial advice. These are simulated results on historical prices: they involve no real money, are produced with hindsight of the rules, and past results do not predict future ones. Costs and fills are modelled, and your broker's prices and costs will differ. Trading leveraged products carries a high risk of losing money; test on a demo account first.