25 critical minerals · 2005 to 28 Sep 2026 · annual averages and live prices
Every mineral runs on a cycle. Learn to read it.
See which minerals led each year for twenty years. Then trace each one to its supply, its demand, the countries that ship it and the miners that dig it.
Leaderboard 20 calendar years, ranked
The periodic table of mineral returns
Each column ranks the top 20 of our 25 minerals by annual-average price change in that year. The last column is 2026 so far, against the 2025 average. Hover a tile to trace one mineral through the table; click it to pin.
Cycles Rotation, momentum and reversal
Minerals rotate. Clockwise.
The cycle compass plots each mineral’s price against its own five-year trend (left to right) and its one-year momentum (bottom to top). Cycles turn clockwise: recovery, expansion, slowdown, contraction. Press play to watch 2010 to 2026 year to date.
The pattern
Leadership passes from group to group, and rarely repeats.
Darker = that group’s average change ranked higher that year (1st of 6 is darkest).
Strategy lab Back-tests on the table above
Chase the winners, or buy the losers?
Each strategy rebalances every January into an equal-weight basket chosen from the previous year’s ranking. The line shows what $100 would have grown to on annual-average prices.
Minerals 25 profiles
Pick an element. Read its story.
Price history, supply and demand drivers, where it is mined, who mines it and our outlook. Every profile ends with a scenario model you can adjust.
Compare Up to four at once
Side by side, rebased to 100.
Choose minerals and a start year. The correlation grid shows which ones actually diversify each other. Click any cell to compare that pair.
Correlation of annual changes, 2006–2025
World map Production and trade
Where it’s dug, and where it goes.
Switch between mine production, exports and imports. Flow lines trace the largest trade lanes from exporters to importers.
Drivers Demand pull and supply push
What moves the price.
Nine demand themes and six supply forces explain most of the table. Select a theme to see which minerals it pulls, and which it pushes away.
Demand sensitivity by mineral
Supply risk: China processing share vs. top-3 mine concentration
Filled dots are under export controls. Upper right is where supply shocks come from.
Six forces on the supply side
Miners 51 listed and state producers
The companies that dig it up.
Market capitalisation is split across each company’s revenue mix. The result is roughly how much listed equity rides on each mineral. Filter the table by mineral to find the purest exposure.
Equity exposure by mineral, $bn (cap × revenue share)
Company universe · bubble = market cap
Newsroom
What moved this month, and where the Street sees it going.
Our short summaries of the month’s mineral stories, with links to the original reporting, plus the latest published bank forecasts set against today’s price.
Broker targets vs latest price
Each row is scaled to that mineral. The dark bar is today’s price, the dots are targets.
Ask Assay An analyst that has read every number here
Ask the table anything.
Assay answers from the dataset on this page: prices to 28 Sep 2026, rankings, producers, trade, drivers, miners, news and broker forecasts. It explains its reasoning and flags what the data can’t tell you.