How to Read the ScInfoLabs Live Dashboard (and Its Limits)
Our live dashboard tracks 26 commodities across precious metals, industrial metals and steel, energy, and food and agriculture, refreshing every second. This guide explains exactly what you are seeing — including what the data can and cannot tell you.
LIVE versus INDICATIVE
Cards marked LIVE (gold, silver, platinum, palladium and copper) stream real spot prices from a public market data feed, polled every second. When these prices move, a real market moved.
Cards marked INDICATIVE (energy, steel, grains, softs) work differently. True second-by-second exchange feeds for these markets are licensed products costing thousands of dollars monthly. Instead, indicative cards anchor to the latest published benchmark levels, refreshed with our research, and display small bounded movements around that anchor to visualize intraday texture. They are honest approximations of current levels — not tradeable quotes.
Why we built it this way
Transparency beats false precision. Most commodity dashboards either paywall real data or present delayed prices as live. We label the distinction explicitly because the two uses differ: LIVE cards can inform timing sensitivity; INDICATIVE cards inform level awareness — knowing Brent is near $76 rather than $96 matters for planning even if the cents are approximate.
Responsible use
- Never trade off this dashboard. Verify with your broker or exchange; our data can be delayed or approximate.
- Use trend badges as research starting points. Each card's signal (record zone, supply wave, surplus) summarizes published analyst research — links in our articles and footer.
- Session change ≠ daily change. The percentage shown measures movement since you opened the page.
Questions about methodology or data requests? Reach us through the contact form.