Bromine: Correlation
Prices it moves with, and why
Bromine is extracted from salt brines, mostly in Israel and Jordan around the Dead Sea, the United States, China and India's Gujarat coast. Demand from flame retardants, oil well fluids and chemicals sets contract prices, with Chinese supply swings causing spikes.
No public price Bromine has no public monthly price series: Few brine producers selling on contracts; no public monthly index.What its price moves with
Bromine is drawn from the same concentrated brines that yield salt, for example in Gujarat salt pans and Chinese coastal wells. Salt and bromine output therefore move together, and weather that affects evaporation affects both.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Dead Sea producers recover potash and bromine from the same brine, so their production plans link the two. These firms are among the largest bromine suppliers, giving potash economics a say in bromine supply.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Brominated flame retardants for electronics, insulation foam and textiles are the largest bromine use. Bans on some older compounds have shifted demand to newer polymeric types, but electronics output still drives volume.
No public price for flame retardants, so the link is explained in words only.Plants that oxidise paraxylene into purified terephthalic acid use a cobalt, manganese and bromide catalyst. Polyester fibre and bottle demand in Asia therefore pulls on bromine supply through the steady consumption and loss of this catalyst.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Clear calcium, sodium and zinc bromide brines are used to complete oil and gas wells. Deepwater and offshore drilling activity therefore adds a cyclical layer of bromine demand that rises and falls with oil company spending plans.
No public price for oilfield and mining chemicals, so the link is explained in words only.Zinc-bromine flow batteries store electricity in bromine-based electrolytes. They are a small market today, but if large grid storage orders favour this chemistry over lithium-ion, they could become a meaningful new bromine outlet.
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.