Dysprosium (Dy) is a "magnet rare earth" that shows up when performance matters at high temperature. In practice, that means Dy is less about broad industrial demand and more about a specific, bottlenecked part of the permanent-magnet stack.
Dysprosium is not a clean, liquid commodity market you can "own" directly. It's a thin, spec-driven industrial material whose price and availability are dominated by processing concentration, policy risk, and magnet supply-chain dynamics.
USGS publishes an average price series for dysprosium oxide (99.5% min). In the USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2025 table, dysprosium oxide is shown at 261, 410, 382, 330, and 260 $/kg across the recent years listed (ending with 2024 at $260/kg).
Market snapshot:
Expensive versus light rare earths, and volatile.
Day-to-day pricing is mostly handled by specialist price services rather than a deep exchange-traded market. For example, Fastmarkets launched a weekly Rotterdam assessment for dysprosium oxide (ex-warehouse Rotterdam) in August 2025.
If you're trying to understand why price can jump without any "new demand" headline, that story sits in the chain itself: dysprosium supply chain
Dy only becomes a tradable spec after separation. This is why control of cracking, separation, and finishing matters more than "resource size" for investable outcomes.
The operational mechanics are here: mining and processing
Heavy rare earth units have been unusually exposed to upstream disruption risk because a meaningful share of feed has been tied into Myanmar-to-China flows. When those flows tighten, Dy availability tightens fast.
Dy is pulled through the market by high-performance NdFeB magnets. That includes EV traction motors and other high-temperature motor and generator use cases.
The industry has been reducing Dy intensity (often by changing how heavy rare earths are introduced into the magnet rather than bulk-doping everything). This can blunt Dy demand growth even when EV volumes rise.
The mechanisms and realistic substitutes are mapped here: dysprosium substitutes
This is the cleanest "Dy-linked" equity exposure because Dy is a bottleneck product, not a retail metal.
Lynas announced first production of separated dysprosium oxide at Lynas Malaysia in May 2025, a milestone widely reported as the first commercial separated heavy rare earth production outside China.
What to watch:
Energy Fuels reported producing kilogram-scale 99.9% dysprosium oxide at White Mesa in 2025 and later announced that its US-produced heavy rare earth oxide had been successfully qualified for use in permanent magnets (with terbium piloting planned).
What to watch:
Important nuance: many "rare earth" miners are mainly NdPr stories. Dysprosium exposure is often indirect unless the company is explicitly producing separated Dy (or has a credible plan to do so).
Dysprosium recycling is strategically attractive because magnets are a high-grade rare earth stream, but the constraint is feedstock access and qualification. The details are here: dysprosium recycling
Coverage in 2025 described Ionic Technologies ramping production of high-purity dysprosium and terbium oxides at its Belfast plant.
What to watch:
These do not give you "dysprosium price exposure." They give you equity exposure to companies across rare earth and strategic metals value chains.
VanEck describes REMX as tracking an index of companies with a "pure-play" revenue focus in rare earth and strategic metals.
The UCITS version tracks the MVIS Global Rare Earth/Strategic Metals index and is commonly used for European access to the theme.
The tradeoff is simple: ETFs reduce single-project blowups, but they dilute any upside from a specific Dy tightness event.
Physical rare earths are not like gold. Spreads are wide, specs and impurities matter, liquidity is thin, and resale channels are industrial, not retail. Even the existence of price assessments (Fastmarkets, Asian Metal) does not mean there is a retail-friendly spot market.
When a company or fund claims "dysprosium exposure," focus on:
Do they actually produce separated Dy₂O₃, or are they selling mixed concentrates and calling it "Dy exposure"?
In-house separation vs toll processing. The bottleneck risk is different.
Magnet supply chains are conservative. "Pilot produced" is not the same as "qualified repeatedly."
Can they monetize the full rare earth basket without inventory buildup and discounting?
Rare earth chemistry punishes weak execution and weak permitting plans.
Export controls, licensing, and geopolitical shocks can move equities faster than the underlying chemistry changes.
It's a magnet performance metal. EV motors matter, but the driver is high-temperature coercivity requirements in specific magnet and motor designs, plus how much Dy is used per magnet as technology evolves.
Usually indirectly, via companies that either produce separated heavy rare earth oxides (Dy/Tb) or have credible near-term capability, plus selective recyclers with real qualification progress.
Assuming "more mines" solves dysprosium. Dy is a separation and qualification story first, and a mining story second. The chain detail is here: dysprosium supply chain