What your money buys in gold: USD, EUR, GBP, JPY and SEK, 1971–2026

gold price in local currency, index 2000=100, log, 1971–Oct 2026. Line/bar chart, GAVF style; full numbers in numbers.csv.

Educational analysis of currencies measured in gold, not investment advice. No trading signals; descriptive only. Currency news is usually a contest: the dollar against the euro, the krona against the pound. Someone always “wins”. This post steps outside that contest and measures five major currencies against something no central bank issues: an ounce of gold. […]

Why your krona paycheck buys less: prices, houses and gold, 1981–2025

Line chart 1981–2025, index 1981=100, log scale. Disposable income per person rises to 776, consumer prices to 373, real income to 208.

Ask a Swede whether their krona paycheck goes as far as it used to and most will say no. The data give a more precise answer: it depends on what you measure the paycheck against. Against ordinary consumer prices, the average Swede’s income buys more than it did in 1981. The sense that it buys […]

Who really shrank? Buybacks measured in gold, 2015–2026

Horizontal bar chart of the change in total shares outstanding for 36 US and Nordic companies, from early 2015 to October 2026. Newmont (+111.2%) and SSAB (+81.5%, from a 2016 rights issue) issued the most shares. Apple (−37.8%), JPMorgan Chase (−28.9%), McDonald's (−27.3%), Home Depot (−24.3%) and Caterpillar (−24.2%) reduced their share counts the most. Eighteen companies cut shares by more than 5%, and 16 stayed within ±5%. Six Nordic companies (Sandvik, Investor, Atlas Copco, Swedbank, Assa Abloy, Volvo) show exactly 0.0% because their share counts stayed constant on today's basis; a dagger footnote explains Atlas Copco's buybacks were redemptions. Source line: GAVF Gold-Oz Screener, BusinessCraft analysis; data as of 2026-10-19. Not a trading signal.

This is not investment advice and nothing here is a buy or sell idea. Share buybacks are usually reported in dollars and share counts. Our Gold-Oz Screener (GAVF v2.2) asks something different: what happens if you measure a company in troy ounces of gold instead of in currency? We ran 36 large US and Nordic […]