Silicon: Correlation
Prices it moves with, and why
Silicon metal is smelted from quartz with coal and wood chips in electric furnaces, mostly in China, so power and coal costs set the price. Demand comes from aluminium alloys, silicones and, increasingly, polysilicon for solar panels.
No public price Silicon has no public monthly price series: Priced in Chinese markets and private assessments; no free series used.What its price moves with
Silicon is alloyed with aluminium for engine blocks, wheels and castings, so car and aluminium output drive a large part of demand. The two metals also share Chinese smelters' exposure to power costs and curbs.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Silicon metal is refined into ultra-pure polysilicon for solar cells and chips, now one of its fastest-growing uses. Chinese solar overcapacity crashed polysilicon prices, dragging silicon metal prices down too.
No public price for polysilicon, so the link is explained in words only.Silicones are made from silicon metal and methyl chloride, so silicone producers are big buyers, and costs pass through to sealants, rubbers and oils used in construction, cars and personal care.
No public price for silicones, so the link is explained in words only.Each solar panel is built on silicon wafers, so solar installation growth pulls on silicon metal through polysilicon. Solar has become the swing factor in silicon demand, making prices follow the solar cycle.
No public price for solar photovoltaics, so the link is explained in words only.Chinese silicon smelters often run on coal-fired power in Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia and use coal as a carbon reductant, so coal and power costs set the floor price for the metal.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.High-purity quartz or quartzite is the raw material, reduced to silicon in the furnace. Ordinary sand is cheap, but the high-purity grades needed are scarcer and matter more for quality than for price.
No public price for silica sand, so the link is explained in words only.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.