The nickel market crash of March 2022 on the London Metal Exchange (LME) has reaffirmed the need for a study of financialization specifically focused on the base metal derivatives. This paper employs two methods to analyze time-varying levels of financialization in aluminum, copper, nickel, lead, zinc, and tin: (1) R-squared decomposition of the LME futures change in price slopes and volatility by financial variables and metal-specific fundamental variables, and (2) Granger causality between net position changes of money managers and returns of the LME futures. The two methods’ results are corroborated to suggest a relative ranking of the six LME-traded base metals in the order of: copper, zinc, nickel, aluminum, tin, and lead. The findings also suggest that there may exist an inflection point in the financialization curve at which a base metal enters into a period of de-financialization.