Fishmeal & shrimp: Correlation
Prices it moves with, and why
The series is the fishmeal price, made from anchovy caught off Peru and Chile. Catches depend on El Nino, fishing quotas and the season, and demand comes from fish and shrimp farms, especially in China, and pig feed.
Market price World Bank Pink Sheet: Fish meal $/mt · monthly, Jan 2006 to Sep 2026What its price moves with
Selected linkFishmeal & shrimp and Soybeans
Monthly changes 0.06 little or none correlation 12-month changes 0.40 weak correlation Last 5 years 0.19 monthly changes Lead or lag −5 mo Fishmeal & shrimp tends to lead by 5 months (r 0.16) Price function, Jan 2006 to Sep 2026 Fishmeal & shrimp ≈ 57.7 × (Soybeans)0.53 R² 0.29 On this fit, a 10% higher soybeans price goes with a 5.1% higher fishmeal & shrimp price over the long run. Units: $/mt and $/mt. The fit is loose, so treat the function as a rough guide.Chart: Fishmeal & shrimp and Soybeans prices rebased to 100 at Jan 2006, log scale
Both prices rebased to 100 at Jan 2006, on a log scale so equal percentage moves look the same size.Chart: Fishmeal & shrimp price against Soybeans price, monthly, log scales, with fitted line
Each dot is one month; paler dots are older (2006), darker dots recent (2026); the ringed dot is the latest month. The dashed line is the fitted price function. Both axes are logarithmic.Soybean meal replaces fishmeal in many feeds when fishmeal is expensive, so the two compete. There is almost no monthly link at 0.06, but yearly moves correlate at 0.40, as feed buyers slowly shift between them.
little or none co-movement month to month · 249 months Show chartsFishing boats and fishmeal drying plants burn fuel, so oil prices raise costs. The data shows only a weak link: monthly moves correlate at 0.07 and yearly moves at 0.22, because catches drive prices.
little or none co-movement month to month · 249 months Show chartsSynthetic amino acids let feed makers replace fishmeal with plant proteins in shrimp and fish feed. Higher fishmeal prices increase their use, but amino acids have no public price series here.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Pig feed is a big buyer of fishmeal, especially for young piglets in China. The data shows no direct link: monthly moves correlate at 0.07 and yearly moves at 0.00, as fishmeal supply is ruled by catches.
little or none co-movement month to month · 249 months Show chartsHow 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.