We employ orbital magnetic response functions as a tool to investigate flux-dependent spectral correlations of chaotic quantum dots in the ballistic regime. We compare for the first time results for the persistent current and susceptibility from a semiclassical theory (without adjustable parameters) with accurate quantum-mechanical calculations for the case of an ensemble of chaotic rings threaded by a magnetic flux. We discuss the temperature dependence and suggest this to be a natural and physically relevant parameter in order to study (experimentally) the signature of different semiclassical timescales in smoothed spectral correlation functions.