Chlorine: Correlation
Prices it moves with, and why
Chlorine is made with caustic soda by passing electricity through brine. It is hard to store or ship, so it is mostly used on site to make PVC, polyurethanes and other chemicals, and to treat water.
Proxy US PPI: alkalies and chlorine index (BLS base period) · monthly, Jan 2006 to Sep 2026There is no free public price for chlorine 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 linkChlorine and PVC
Monthly changes 0.08 little or none correlation 12-month changes 0.08 little or none correlation Last 5 years 0.02 monthly changes Lead or lag +4 mo PVC tends to lead by 4 months (r 0.17) Price function, Jan 2006 to Sep 2026 Chlorine ≈ 1.32 × (PVC)1.01 R² 0.48 On this fit, a 10% higher PVC price goes with a 10.1% higher chlorine price over the long run. Units: index (BLS base period) and index (BLS base period).Chart: Chlorine and PVC 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: Chlorine price against PVC 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.Chlorine and caustic soda come from the same cell in fixed amounts, so the market must absorb both. Strong chlorine demand often lowers caustic prices. Both use the same US index here, so no statistics are shown.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.PVC is the largest chlorine use, so construction demand for pipes and window frames drives chlorine output. The PVC proxy is a broad plastics index; monthly moves correlate at 0.08 and yearly moves at 0.08.
little or none co-movement month to month · 249 months Show chartsChlorine reacts with ethylene to make vinyl chloride, the building block of PVC. The VCM proxy is a broad organics index; monthly moves correlate at 0.20 and yearly moves at 0.63.
little or none co-movement month to month · 249 months Show chartsSalt brine is the raw material for chlorine, though it is a small cost compared with power. The data shows no link: monthly moves correlate at minus 0.10 and yearly moves at minus 0.09, since salt is bought on long contracts.
little or none co-movement month to month · 162 months Show chartsElectricity is the largest cost of making chlorine, so power prices set the cost floor. The proxy is US industrial power; monthly moves correlate at 0.14 and yearly moves at 0.46.
little or none co-movement month to month · 249 months Show chartsChlorine and its products, such as bleach, disinfect drinking water, sewage and pools. The water treatment index correlates at 0.18 for monthly moves and 0.51 for yearly moves, as chlorine costs feed into these products.
little or none 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.