Talc: Correlation
Prices it moves with, and why
Talc is mined and milled in China, India, Pakistan, Brazil and Finland, and priced by purity and brightness under contracts. Car plastics, paper, paints, ceramics and cosmetics drive demand, and asbestos lawsuits have hit cosmetic talc in some markets.
Proxy US producer price index: other nonmetallic minerals incl. talc index, BLS base period · monthly, Jan 2006 to Sep 2026There is no free public price for talc itself, so this tab uses the closest public series as a stand-in. Read the numbers as an indication, not as the price of this exact item.
What its price moves with
Selected linkTalc and Polypropylene
Monthly changes -0.04 little or none correlation 12-month changes -0.27 weak correlation Last 5 years -0.02 monthly changes Lead or lag +6 mo Polypropylene tends to lead by 6 months (r 0.10) Price function, Jan 2006 to Sep 2026 Talc ≈ 0.193 × (Polypropylene)1.32 R² 0.53 On this fit, a 10% higher polypropylene price goes with a 13.4% higher talc price over the long run. Units: index, BLS base period and index (BLS base period).Chart: Talc and Polypropylene 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: Talc price against Polypropylene 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.Talc-filled polypropylene is used for car bumpers, dashboards and appliance housings, making it a large talc outlet. The proxy index shows no real link, monthly moves at -0.04 and yearly moves at -0.27, because filler contracts change slowly and the proxy covers a wide basket of minerals.
little or none co-movement month to month · 249 months Show chartsTalc is a common extender in paints, improving flow and durability at low cost. The two indexes share some yearly movement, at 0.35, but monthly moves correlate at only 0.08, as talc contract prices adjust far less often than paint prices.
little or none co-movement month to month · 249 months Show chartsTalc and pigments are both bought by paint, plastics and ink makers, so they face the same customers and the same US producer cost pressures. The indexes move together modestly, at 0.28 monthly and 0.39 yearly, and 0.37 in the last five years.
weak co-movement month to month · 249 months Show chartsKaolin and other clays compete with talc as fillers in paper, ceramics and plastics, and both proxies cover US non-metallic mineral producers. Monthly moves barely correlate, at 0.03, but yearly moves reach 0.44, a sign of shared slow cost and demand trends.
little or none co-movement month to month · 249 months Show chartsMica is another platy mineral filler used in paints, plastics and cosmetics. Buyers switch between talc and mica on cost and colour, and cosmetic makers moved some products away from talc after asbestos contamination lawsuits.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Much traded talc travels by sea from China, Pakistan and India, so freight adds to landed cost. The US proxy shows no link with deep-sea freight prices, monthly moves at -0.14 and yearly moves at 0.07, because it measures domestic producer prices.
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.