Acetic acid: Correlation
Prices it moves with, and why
Acetic acid is mostly made by reacting methanol with carbon monoxide from gas or coal syngas, and China is the largest producer. Prices follow methanol and coal, and demand from PTA solvent, vinyl acetate and acetate esters.
Proxy US PPI: other basic organic chemicals index (BLS base period) · monthly, Jan 2006 to Sep 2026There is no free public price for acetic acid itself, so this tab uses the closest public series as a stand-in. Read the numbers as an indication, not as the price of this exact item.
What its price moves with
Selected linkAcetic acid and Thermal coal
Monthly changes 0.17 little or none correlation 12-month changes 0.76 strong correlation Last 5 years 0.06 monthly changes Lead or lag +2 mo Thermal coal tends to lead by 2 months (r 0.26) Price function, Jan 2006 to Sep 2026 Acetic acid ≈ 65.8 × (Thermal coal)0.28 R² 0.59 On this fit, a 10% higher thermal coal price goes with a 2.7% higher acetic acid price over the long run. Units: index (BLS base period) and $/mt.Chart: Acetic acid and Thermal coal prices rebased to 100 at Jan 2006, log scale
Both prices rebased to 100 at Jan 2006, on a log scale so equal percentage moves look the same size.Chart: Acetic acid price against Thermal coal price, monthly, log scales, with fitted line
Each dot is one month; paler dots are older (2006), darker dots recent (2026); the ringed dot is the latest month. The dashed line is the fitted price function. Both axes are logarithmic.Methanol is the main raw material, so acetic acid margins are tracked as a spread over methanol. Both sit in the same proxy index here, so no separate statistics are shown.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Chinese plants make their carbon monoxide and methanol from coal, so coal costs set the price of the marginal Chinese tonne. The Australian coal price moves with the proxy at 0.17 monthly and 0.76 yearly.
little or none co-movement month to month · 249 months Show chartsOutside China, gas supplies the syngas for both carbon monoxide and methanol. European gas moves with the basic organics proxy at 0.21 monthly and 0.80 yearly. The monthly tie is weak because acetic acid margins follow Chinese supply.
weak co-movement month to month · 249 months Show chartsPTA plants use acetic acid as the solvent for oxidising paraxylene, so polyester demand affects acetic acid. The cyclic intermediates proxy moves with the basic organics proxy at 0.33 monthly and 0.80 yearly.
weak co-movement month to month · 249 months Show chartsVinyl acetate, made from acetic acid and ethylene, becomes PVA glues and emulsion binders. The adhesives index moves with the proxy at 0.24 monthly and 0.61 yearly, as glue makers pass costs on slowly.
weak co-movement month to month · 249 months Show chartsHow to read these numbers
Correlation of monthly changes (the number in the coloured pill) compares how much each price moved, month by month, since 2006 or the first month both series exist. It runs from −1 to +1: near +1 the two usually rise and fall in the same months, near 0 there is no link, and a negative number means they tend to move in opposite directions. Above 0.7 is strong, 0.4 to 0.7 moderate, 0.2 to 0.4 weak.
12-month changes compare year-on-year moves, which shows whether two prices share the same cycles even when the month-to-month noise differs.
Price function is a straight-line fit of the two prices on logarithmic scales: price ≈ k × (partner price)β. β is how much this price moves, in per cent, for a 1% move in the partner over the whole period, and R² is the share of the variation the fit explains. Two prices that both drift up with inflation can fit well without any real link, so read it together with the monthly correlation.
Lead or lag checks whether the monthly correlation is clearly higher when one price is shifted by 1 to 6 months.
Correlation is not cause. The reasons on each card explain the economic link; the numbers show how strongly it has shown up in prices. Proxy series are US producer price indexes or related prices and can blur the real link.
Data: World Bank Commodity Price Data (Pink Sheet), October 2026; US Bureau of Labor Statistics producer price indexes, IMF primary commodity prices and US EIA prices via FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, retrieved November 2026. Calculations by this site.