Reagents and high-purity lab chemicals: Correlation
Prices it moves with, and why
Laboratory reagents and high-purity chemicals, such as HPLC-grade solvents, acids, salts and analytical standards, are sold in small packs through catalogues. Prices reflect purity, packaging and distribution far more than bulk chemical costs.
No public price Reagents and high-purity lab chemicals has no public monthly price series: Sold through catalogues and distributors; no public price index.What its price moves with
HPLC-grade methanol, a staple of analytical labs, is purified from bulk methanol, one of the most common chemicals. Packaging, purification and quality testing dominate the price, so bulk methanol swings barely change catalogue prices.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Acetonitrile, the key solvent for liquid chromatography, is a by-product of acrylonitrile production. Acrylonitrile plant cuts in the 2008 to 2009 downturn caused a severe acetonitrile shortage for analytical labs worldwide.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Lab reagents and fab wet chemicals rely on similar distillation and trace-metal control. Some suppliers serve both markets with high-purity acids and solvents from the same plants and quality systems.
No public price for ultra-pure wet chemicals, so the link is explained in words only.Helium is used as a carrier gas in chromatography and to cool NMR and MRI magnets. Helium shortages have pushed labs to switch to hydrogen or nitrogen carrier gases and to recover helium.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Pharma research labs and CDMOs are big buyers of reagents and solvents. Their research spending, which in India is rising with CDMO growth and new research centres, drives reagent demand.
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.