What if Houthi missiles seal the Bab el-Mandeb strait?
Houthi closure of Bab el-Mandeb forces Suez tankers around the Cape, adding ~10 days of voyage; the clearest trade is long Brent vs WTI as the marginal seaborne barrel and tanker freight (TD3/TD20) spike, with VIX bid on tail risk. Rhymes with the Dec-2023 Red Sea diversion, which lifted Brent only modestly but blew out container/clean-tanker rates; the recurring lesson is freight and crack spreads move more than flat price unless Hormuz is also threatened. Forward angle: with OPEC+ spare capacity high in 2026, flat-price upside is capped versus 2022.
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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 0–6 months 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. Houthi anti-ship missiles close Bab el-Mandeb, forcing Suez-bound tankers around Africa and spiking freight. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — Geopolitical risk ▲ · Oil supply risk ▲ — which propagate through our causal graph to the markets below.