Mica: Correlation
Prices it moves with, and why
Mica is mined as scrap and flake mica in China, India, Madagascar and Finland, and as sheet mica mainly in India. Uses are paints, joint compound, cosmetics and electrical insulation. Informal, small-scale mining in parts of India makes pricing opaque.
No public price Mica has no public monthly price series: Small-scale, partly informal trade; no public monthly price series.What its price moves with
Ground mica is a platy filler that improves paint durability and reduces cracking. Coatings demand from construction and industry is the largest outlet for flake mica, so mica volumes follow the building and repainting cycle.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Pearlescent pigments for cars, cosmetics and packaging are thin mica flakes coated with metal oxides. This high-value use rewards clean, bright mica and has raised scrutiny of supply chains in Jharkhand and Madagascar.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Most pearlescent pigments coat mica with titanium dioxide, so the two are bought together by effect pigment makers. Synthetic mica is replacing natural mica in some premium grades, partly because buyers want supply free of child labour concerns.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Talc, kaolin and mica are all platy fillers for paints and plastics. Buyers trade them off on cost, colour and performance, so their prices are loosely linked, though each has uses where the others perform poorly.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Mica is added to gypsum joint compounds and some plasterboard to reduce cracking. Housing construction and renovation therefore link gypsum products and flake mica demand, especially in North America where joint compound is widely used.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Sheet mica and mica tape insulate high-voltage motor and generator windings, as mica resists heat and electrical breakdown. Electrification, rail and grid investment support this specialised use, which needs high-quality sheet mica from a small number of Indian and other sources.
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.