What if an assassination attempt wounds a sitting US President?
A failed assassination attempt is a sharp-but-brief vol pop: VIX spikes, high-beta sells, then mean-reverts as continuity holds. Direct analogue is the July-2024 Trump rally shooting, which produced a fleeting risk-off blip the market shrugged off within a session (and arguably firmed political-outcome odds). Forward angle: the market lesson is that a wounded-but-surviving leader resolves uncertainty fast — fade the VIX spike; the durable move is in political-outcome-sensitive assets (sector rotation), not broad beta.
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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. An assassination attempt wounds a sitting US President, spiking volatility. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — Geopolitical risk ▲ — which propagate through our causal graph to the markets below.