What if the US seizes Big Oil's excess profits retroactively?
A retroactive US windfall tax on energy majors is an XOM/CVX-equity derating, not a crude-bull catalyst: guidance cuts hit integrated-major free cash flow and buybacks while crude itself barely moves on a tax. The cascade wrongly pushes Brent/WTI up — taxing producers doesn't tighten barrels. Rhymes with the 1980 US windfall-profits tax (curbed domestic drilling, hurt producer returns) and EU 2022 solidarity contributions. Energy equities fall even as oil is flat.
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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. US enacts retroactive windfall tax on energy majors, Exxon and Chevron guidance cut, sector reprices. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — Risk appetite ▼ — which propagate through our causal graph to the markets below.