Are commodity prices more volatile than they used to be?

The median benchmark price's five-year volatility was 22% a year at the end of 2025, against a high of 30% at the end of 1977 and a low of 11% at the end of 1969. 4 of 43 prices are in the most volatile tenth of their own history now, and 5 in the least.

Volatility here is the annualised standard deviation of monthly percentage changes (log changes) in the cash price over a rolling 60-month window, so 20% means a typical year's swing of roughly a fifth. Five years is long enough to smooth one bad season and short enough to show a change of regime. The line shows the median across all prices that have a full window at each year-end (at least 15 of them in every year shown); the table ranks each price by where its latest window sits among its own earlier windows. This extends the drawdowns report, which gives volatility by decade only.

Median across prices with a full window at each December; 31 prices in 1965, 43 in 2025. The set of prices changes as series begin, so part of any rise or fall is which prices are in the median.

Where each price sits in its own history

"Share of earlier windows calmer" is 100% for a price whose latest five years were more volatile than any five-year window before it. Windows overlap, so neighbouring windows are not independent and the percentile is a description of the history, not a probability. Volatility of a cash price also includes inflation and, for series that begin in the 1960s and 1970s, the very different market structure of those decades.

World Bank Pink Sheet primary benchmark series, monthly averages in US dollars; prices with at least 20 years of monthly changes and a value in the latest months. Latest window ends August 2026. Annualised as the standard deviation of monthly log changes times the square root of 12.