Vanadium: Correlation
Prices it moves with, and why
Vanadium comes mostly from steel slag and co-production with iron ore in China, Russia, South Africa and Brazil. Most goes into high-strength rebar, so Chinese construction and rebar standards set prices; flow batteries are a growing use.
No public price Vanadium has no public monthly price series: Priced in private trade assessments; no free public monthly series.What its price moves with
Small additions of ferrovanadium make rebar and structural steel much stronger, so Chinese construction and rebar standards dominate demand. When China tightened rebar strength rules, vanadium prices jumped, showing how policy can move a by-product metal.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Much vanadium is recovered from vanadium-bearing magnetite iron ore and from the slag of steel made with it, especially in China and Russia. Supply therefore follows iron and steel output more than vanadium prices.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Vanadium redox flow batteries store grid energy in a vanadium electrolyte that does not wear out, making them a growing use. Their cost depends heavily on vanadium prices, and some suppliers lease the electrolyte to buyers to reduce that risk.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.The workhorse aerospace titanium alloy contains vanadium alongside aluminium, so aircraft build rates add steady high-value demand. This is a small volume compared with steel, but buyers pay a premium for aerospace-grade master alloy.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Vanadium pentoxide is the standard catalyst for making sulphuric acid, so every acid plant needs it, though in small amounts that are replaced only every few years. It is a stable niche demand, not a price driver.
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.