The yield curve.

If we plot maturity against yield for every conventional gilt, and draw a smooth line through them, we get the yield curve. The dots are those gilts. Hover one for its name, coupon, maturity and the amount outstanding. A dot's height is not a price a dealer quoted. It is the redemption yield you get by running that bond's payments through the fitted curve. Dealt prices of named gilts are not republished here.

The smooth line on the chart is the Bank of England's fitted curve, the one the Bank publishes. A standard parametric way to draw a line of that kind is the Nelson–Siegel–Svensson model: a few factors for the level, the slope and the curvature, fitted so the line passes close to the bonds. The Bank uses its own spline rather than that formula. This site does not refit the line. It draws the Bank's.

The yield curve is one of the central indicators in macroeconomics, and its slope has a long record as a warning. When short yields rise above long yields, recessions have often followed, above all in the United States. It is a tendency, not a clock. An inversion can also mean that inflation is expected to fall, or that investors are paying up for the safety of a long bond. What the picture lets us see, directly, is the price of borrowing at every length. Bank Rate is the overnight point, at the left edge. The five-year point is what a five-year fixed mortgage is priced from. The ten-year and the thirty-year are the cost of lending further out. Whether the line rises or falls is the market's charge for time, which is unpacked on what makes up the price.

The price view is an illustration. Pick a coupon. The line is what a bond with that coupon would be worth at each maturity if it were discounted on today's curve, assuming you are on a coupon date. The dots stay each gilt's own price, from its own coupon, which is why a low-coupon long gilt falls well below the line. Neither is a price anyone dealt. When the coupon equals the 10-year par yield, the 10-year point on the line sits at 100.

Real yields come from index-linked gilts. Implied inflation is the gap between the nominal and the real curve. It compensates for the Retail Prices Index, not CPI, so it is not "the market's CPI forecast".