The Notebook Desk

The Notebook Desk is the byline on the shorter items in The Macro Notebook. This page sets out what it writes and the standards it keeps.

What the desk writes

• Market notes: 600 to 900 words, with a chart when a chart helps.
• In plain sight: 600 to 900 words around one chart.
• The Week ahead: the week's high-impact data releases, with the prior figure, the median forecast from a public consensus source, and the actual figure once it is out.
• On my desk: a weekly list of primary documents, each with one line on what it says.
• The number and Chart of the day at the top of the front page, each with its date and its source.

Notes are different. They carry the author's name, and they are the author's own analysis and opinion.

Every desk item is checked and approved before it goes live.

Where the numbers come from

Every figure comes from a primary or official source where possible: central banks, statistics offices, exchanges, company filings, the US Treasury, FRED and the IMF.

Each figure is linked in the text, at the place where it is used. Every chart names its source. On wider screens, the item file beside the text gives the number of sources the item relies on.

Market data in the ticker and the market tables comes from official sources whose terms allow reuse, such as the US Treasury, the Federal Reserve, the ECB, the Bundesbank, the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan and the EIA. Each table shows its date. Gold, silver and crypto are the exception: they come from the CoinGecko API. The line under the Markets block on the front page names every source, CoinGecko included. Series whose owners do not allow reuse stay off the site.

A figure that cannot be confirmed is left out.

Photos are public domain or CC0, and each one carries a credit.

Corrections

When an item changes after it goes live, a line under the byline says so. It reads "Updated", then the date and time of the change, then the reason. On wider screens, the item file beside the text shows the same time, or "No updates" if the item has not changed. Times are in UTC.

Stories move on after an item is filed, and an older item may not be brought up to date. The filed time on each item shows when it was written.

Contact

To report an error, send a source or ask a question, write to hello@macronotebook.com.