Indium: Correlation
Prices it moves with, and why
Indium is a by-product of zinc refining, mostly in China and South Korea. Indium tin oxide coatings for flat screens and touchscreens take most of it, with solder and solar cells growing, so electronics cycles and zinc output set prices.
No public price Indium has no public monthly price series: Small by-product market priced privately; no public series.What its price moves with
Indium sits in zinc sulphide ores and is recovered from zinc smelter residues, so supply depends on zinc refining and recovery investment rather than indium prices. Price spikes bring old residues into recovery.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Indium tin oxide, a transparent conductor on every LCD and touchscreen, combines indium with a smaller share of tin, so display output links them. Indium-tin alloys are also used as low-melting solders.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Heterojunction solar cells use indium tin oxide layers, and CIGS thin films contain indium, so these technologies' growth adds demand. Makers are cutting indium use per cell because of its cost.
No public price for solar photovoltaics, so the link is explained in words only.Copper indium gallium selenide solar films and indium gallium nitride LEDs use both metals together. Both are minor metals with Chinese-dominated supply and are exposed to the same export policies.
No public price for gallium, so the link is explained in words only.Blue and white LEDs use indium gallium nitride layers, so LED lighting and display backlights are steady indium users, though in very small amounts per device. Volume, not loading, drives this 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.