Boron: Correlation
Prices it moves with, and why
Boron is sold as borate minerals and refined borates, mostly from Turkey's state producer and one large US mine, so supply is concentrated and prices are set in annual contracts. Demand comes from glass fibre, ceramics, detergents, fertilisers and magnets.
No public price Boron has no public monthly price series: Priced in annual contracts by two main producers; no public monthly index.What its price moves with
Borates are melted with silica sand to make glass fibre insulation, textile fibreglass and heat-resistant borosilicate glass. Building insulation and composite demand therefore drives both, and borate is the costlier ingredient in those glass batches.
No public price for silica sand, so the link is explained in words only.Soda ash and borates are both fluxes that lower the melting point of glass. Producers of sodium borates also compete with soda ash in some detergent and glass uses, so both markets follow the glass and construction cycle.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Neodymium-iron-boron magnets need a small amount of boron, usually as ferroboron. Growth in electric vehicle motors and wind turbines lifts this use, though the rare earths, not boron, dominate magnet cost.
No public price for rare earths, so the link is explained in words only.Boron trifluoride and diborane are gases used to dope silicon in chip and solar cell making. The volumes are tiny, but they need very high purity and follow semiconductor fab utilisation.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Wind turbine blades are built from glass fibre composites and their generators often use boron-containing magnets. A strong wind build-out therefore adds demand for borates through two separate channels, the blade composites and the permanent magnets.
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.