Amino acids (lysine, methionine): Correlation
Prices it moves with, and why
Lysine is fermented from corn sugar while methionine is synthesised from propylene, sulphur and natural gas. Prices depend on these inputs, Chinese capacity, and feed demand from pigs and poultry, where amino acids compete with soymeal protein.
No public price Amino acids (lysine, methionine) has no public monthly price series: Traded on contracts and private quotes; no free public price index.What its price moves with
Lysine, threonine and tryptophan are fermented from glucose made from maize, mostly in China. Corn is the largest cost, so a high Chinese corn price lifts lysine offers, although overcapacity often limits the pass-through.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Adding lysine and methionine lets feed makers use less soymeal while meeting protein needs. When soymeal is expensive, amino acid demand rises, so the value of lysine is set partly by the soymeal price.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Methionine is made from acrolein, which comes from propylene, so petrochemical prices drive its cost. This is why methionine tracks oil and propylene more than lysine does. Propylene in turn follows naphtha and crude oil costs.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Methionine production needs hydrogen cyanide and methyl mercaptan, made from natural gas, ammonia and methanol. Gas prices in Europe, where much methionine is made, raise costs for those plants. Gas spikes in 2022 squeezed these plants hard.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Methionine contains sulphur, supplied through hydrogen sulphide and methyl mercaptan made from sulphur. It is a smaller cost than propylene or gas but links methionine to the refinery sulphur market.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Poultry and pig feed take most of the methionine and lysine sold. Growth in Asian meat output, and disease such as African swine fever cutting pig herds, move demand and prices.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.How 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.