Live global benchmark prices for corn and copper from the IMF Primary Commodity Prices release, with a composite macro pulse. Monthly data, FRED-sourced.
Last reviewed: 2026-05-21
Composite (geom. mean)
$1,635
Corn-copper macro pulse
Copper is industrial. The metal is in every wire, every motor, every datacenter, and every EV. Its price is so tightly linked to global manufacturing that traders have called it "Dr. Copper" for decades — the metal with a Ph.D. in economics. The series shown here is the global benchmark price in US dollars per metric ton, sourced from the IMF Primary Commodity Prices release and surfaced via FRED PCOPPUSDM.
Corn is the broadest agricultural commodity. It feeds livestock, sweetens drinks, and powers a third of US ethanol. The series shown is the IMF's global corn price in USD per metric ton (FRED PMAIZMTUSDM), the same denominator used for copper. Putting the two next to each other lets you see when the industrial side of the economy is running hotter than the staples side, and vice versa.
The composite number on the right is the geometric mean of the two prices. Copper trades around forty times the dollar level of corn, so an arithmetic average would just track copper. The geometric mean weights the two series equally in percent terms — a 10% corn move and a 10% copper move both shift the composite by the same amount.
Watch direction over six to twelve months, not month-to-month. Both series are monthly, lagged, and noisy. The shape that matters is whether copper is making higher highs while corn churns sideways (industrial overheating), whether corn is spiking while copper drifts (supply shocks to agriculture, often weather), or whether both are falling together (broad demand weakness — often a recession leading indicator).
Persistent copper strength has historically led PMI inflections by roughly two to six months. Persistent corn weakness has flagged easing food inflation pressure in CPI readings about three months out. Neither is a forecast — both are calibration checks against the rest of the macro picture.
Commodity prices feed straight into the inflation numbers the Fed watches. Copper passes into manufactured goods PPI within a quarter. Corn passes into the food-at-home CPI line within two quarters. If you want a leading read on where the headline CPI is going, watch commodities first. Then cross-check with the unemployment tracker and the live rates dashboard to triangulate the Fed's likely move.
IMF Primary Commodity Prices → St. Louis Fed FRED API → CalcFi live-data cache → this page. Hourly refresh, monthly cadence, no transformation other than the on-page composite. The CSV mirrors on Kaggle hold the full monthly history for back-testing.
Both series are part of the IMF Primary Commodity Prices release. Copper uses FRED series PCOPPUSDM (global price, USD per metric ton). Corn uses FRED series PMAIZMTUSDM (global price, USD per metric ton). Both update monthly.
Copper is the classic industrial bellwether — its nickname "Dr. Copper" reflects how tightly its price tracks global manufacturing and construction. Corn is the largest agricultural commodity by traded volume, feeding livestock, food production, and ethanol. Together they capture the industrial and consumer-staples ends of the commodity complex.
The composite is the geometric mean of the two prices. We use the geometric mean instead of a simple average because copper trades at roughly $8,000 per metric ton and corn at roughly $200 per metric ton — an arithmetic mean would be dominated by copper.
Persistently rising copper usually signals expanding industrial demand, which is bullish growth. Rapid spikes can be supply-shock driven (mine strikes, smelter outages) and may coincide with cost-push inflation. Direction matters less than the source of the move.
The IMF Primary Commodity Prices release is monthly, published mid-month covering the prior month. This page re-fetches hourly from FRED so the displayed value matches FRED within minutes of release.
Sources: FRED PMAIZMTUSDM · FRED PCOPPUSDM · IMF Primary Commodity Prices · Kaggle (corn) · Kaggle (copper).