What if regulators force Amazon to split off its marketplace?
An FTC structural break-up of Amazon's 1P retail from 3P marketplace/logistics is a genuine AMZN re-rating — separating its highest-margin flywheel — so the risk-off and VIX bid are larger than the lighter antitrust cases. Analogue remains the Microsoft 2000 break-up order; structural remedies spook multiples before they ever execute. Forward angle: a standalone marketplace/AWS could unlock sum-of-parts value, so the de-rate is more overhang than permanent impairment.
Every number ships with its receipt — the odds, the range, the precedents, and a public grade at Reality Check. The statistical machinery that produces it is proprietary.
The butterfly cascade
How this trigger trickles across markets, left → right — the root shock, its first‑order moves, then the ripple effects. Drag any node; tap a market for its real price history.
Resolution timeline — how this probability is moving
Our model's odds (electric blue) over time vs the market's (Polymarket, amber), from the past toward the 1–3 years horizon. Each dot is a real macro event that nudged the probability — green pushed it up, red pushed it down. Tap a dot for the source. Loading the probability audit trail…
What it would mean
If this plays out, it is a risk-off shock. FTC wins structural breakup separating Amazon's first-party retail from its third-party marketplace and logistics. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — Risk appetite ▼ — which propagate through our causal graph to the markets below.