Feldspar: Correlation
Prices it moves with, and why
Feldspar is a mineral source of alumina and alkalis for glass and ceramic tiles, mined in Turkey, India, China and Italy. India's tile industry around Morbi in Gujarat is a big buyer. Prices are local, set by grade and freight.
No public price Feldspar has no public monthly price series: Local markets priced by grade; no public monthly price series.What its price moves with
Tile and sanitaryware bodies are blends of feldspar, clay and silica. Feldspar acts as the flux that melts and binds the body when fired, so the two raw materials are bought together by the same plants.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Container and flat glass batches combine silica sand with feldspar to add alumina, which improves durability. Feldspathic sands supply both minerals at once in some regions, which lowers the cost of glass batches near those deposits.
No public price for silica sand, so the link is explained in words only.Feldspar brings sodium and potassium into glass, so it can replace a small share of soda ash. When soda ash is costly, glassmakers may raise feldspar use slightly, which gives feldspar a small share in soda ash price swings.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Feldspar, mica and quartz occur together in pegmatites, including those of Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh. Mining one often yields the others, so local supply of all three is linked and small Indian mines sell several minerals from one pit.
No public price for mica, so the link is explained in words only.Ceramic tile kilns burn piped natural gas, and the Morbi cluster has shifted away from coal gasifiers on pollution rules. Tile output, and thus feldspar demand, falls when gas becomes expensive.
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.