What if an antibiotic-resistant superbug overwhelms hospitals?
An AMR superbug outbreak trades as a demand shock: mobility collapse destroys oil demand (WTI, distillates, energy majors) while gold bids on safe-haven plus expected policy easing. Rhymes with the Mar-2020 COVID demand wipeout and the Nov-2021 Omicron Black-Friday crude selloff. Skeptic's distinction: a bacterial-resistance crisis is slower-moving and more localized to healthcare systems than an airborne pandemic, so the oil-demand hit is likely milder than COVID - the cleaner trade is long hospital/antibiotic-developer names and gold, not a wholesale short of crude.
how we built this number — every step
The class rate is measured from our dated, sourced event library (decade-normalized Poisson — the full table is public at base_rates.json). The variant’s share within its class is the analyst’s editorial call, published so you can audit it. A wider range means thinner precedent. Full recipe: methodology · scored at Reality Check.
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 (gold) over time vs the crowd's (Polymarket, blue), from the past toward the 3–10 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. The gold path is an illustrative reconstruction anchored to today's estimate — real dated events, not a live re-estimate history.
What it would mean
If this plays out, it is a risk-off shock. An antibiotic-resistant superbug outbreak threatens hospitals and global health. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — Pandemic shock ▲ — which propagate through our causal graph to the markets below.
If it happens — the markets it would move
Biggest moves first. Projected moves are cascade-model priors; hist A–B% = what comparable past events actually did (measured abnormal returns), and model prior · unmeasured marks markets with no analogue backing yet. Tap any market for its price history.
| Market | Class | Projected move | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | WTI crude CLon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Commodity | ▼ -2.0% hist -10.33–+0.34% · other way +3.31% (n=12) |
| 2 | Gold XAUon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Commodity | ▲ +1.4% hist +0.01–+1.93% · other way +0.97% (n=12) |
| 3 | Energy sector XLEon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -1.4% hist -5.8–+0.06% · other way -0.51% (n=12) |
| 4 | United Airlines UAL 📈 chart | Equity | ▲ +1.2% hist -0.78–+1.06% · other way +0.75% (n=12) |
| 5 | ExxonMobil XOM 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -1.0% hist -4.32–+0.59% · other way +0.14% (n=12) |
| 6 | Chevron CVX 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -0.9% hist -4.77–+0.33% · other way +0.3% (n=12) |
| 7 | Delta DAL 📈 chart | Equity | ▲ +1.0% hist -2.0–+1.43% · other way +0.7% (n=12) |
| 8 | 30y Treasury yield DGS30 📈 chart | Rate | ▼ -6bp hist -6.67–-0.5% · other way +7.4% (n=12) |
| 9 | 10y Treasury yield DGS10 📈 chart | Rate | ▼ -5bp hist -8.96–+0.8% · other way +8.4% (n=12) |
| 10 | Solana SOLon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Crypto | ▼ -0.4% hist -8.21–+1.9% · other way +0.81% (n=12) |
| 11 | Tech sector XLK 📈 chart | Equity | ▲ +0.4% hist -0.33–+1.22% · other way +0.15% (n=12) |
| 12 | US dollar (DXY) DXYon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | FX | ▼ -0.4% hist -0.67–+0.04% · other way +0.16% (n=12) |
| 13 | USD/JPY USDJPYon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | FX | ▼ -0.4% hist -0.77–+0.13% · other way +0.72% (n=12) |
| 14 | 2y Treasury yield DGS2 | Rate | ▼ -4bp model prior · unmeasured |
Probable recommendation
Why we may diverge from history
Trust history's UAL/DAL shorts: airlines crater in any pandemic-grade health shock, and the COVID-2020 analogues are the cleanest on-channel comparison that exists — the cascade's long is flatly wrong for a superbug.
Historical precedent — what analogous events actually did
Across 40 analogous events (overlap‑weighted), as abnormal returns — market beta stripped, so it's the event's own effect, not the market backdrop. Shown at 20 days (persistent) and 5 days (immediate); ↺ fades = the two horizons disagree. Confidence = consistency × sample × significance.
| Asset | History says | Abnormal (20d · 5d) | Hit | n | Confidence | vs cascade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| XLE XLE | SHORT | -4.2% · 5d -2.0% | 79% | 40 | 0.56 | ✓ matches cascade |
| CL CL | SHORT | -7.6% · 5d -3.1% | 79% | 40 | 0.50 | ✓ matches cascade |
| CVX CVX | SHORT | -3.6% · 5d -2.1% | 74% | 40 | 0.48 | ✓ matches cascade |
| XOM XOM | SHORT | -3.4% · 5d -1.9% | 68% | 40 | 0.35 | ✓ matches cascade |
| EURUSD EURUSD | LONG | +0.6% · 5d +0.1% | 68% | 40 | 0.32 | ✓ matches cascade |
| ETH ETH | SHORT | -6.0% · 5d -4.3% | 69% | 39 | 0.30 | ✓ matches cascade |
| SOL SOL | SHORT | -7.0% · 5d -6.4% | 67% | 36 | 0.28 | ✓ matches cascade |
| US dollar DXY | SHORT | -0.5% · 5d -0.1% | 64% | 40 | 0.25 | ✓ matches cascade |
| KRW KRW | LONG | +0.7% · 5d +0.2% | 64% | 40 | 0.25 | ✓ matches cascade |
| XHB XHB | SHORT | -1.6% · 5d -0.4% | 62% | 40 | 0.20 | ⚠ differs |
| ARM ARM | SHORT | -4.1% · 5d -5.4% | 64% | 22 | 0.19 | ⚠ differs |
| GBPUSD GBPUSD | LONG | +0.5% · 5d -0.3% ↺ fades | 62% | 40 | 0.19 | ✓ matches cascade |
| Bitcoin BTC | SHORT | -3.4% · 5d -3.6% | 62% | 40 | 0.18 | · |
| Gold XAU | LONG | +1.1% · 5d +0.2% | 60% | 40 | 0.16 | ✓ matches cascade |
Why this probability
AMR is slow-burn; a discrete superbug outbreak threatening hospitals globally remains episodic, low over window. A base‑rate‑anchored prior, continuously scored against what actually happens — not a forecast.