What if a Category 6 storm hits the Gulf Coast refinery corridor?
Cleanest trade is the crack spread: a sub-900mb storm into the Houston refining/petrochem corridor knocks out crude-processing and ethylene, so gasoline/diesel and plastics feedstocks spike harder than crude itself. Rhymes with Hurricane Harvey (2017), which idled ~25% of US refining and blew out Gulf gasoline cracks for weeks. Forward angle: today's larger US export-terminal exposure means a bigger global products/LNG shock than Harvey, even as upstream crude is well-supplied.
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 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. 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 unprecedented sub-900mb storm devastates Houston's refinery and petrochemical corridor, spiking fuel and plastics prices. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — Climate/crop supply ▲ · Oil supply risk ▲ — 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 | Brent crude BRENTon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Commodity | ▲ +5.4% hist -0.86–+3.18% · other way +0.31% (n=11) |
| 2 | WTI crude CLon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Commodity | ▲ +4.5% hist -2.39–+2.44% · other way +4.52% (n=11) |
| 3 | Energy sector XLEon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▲ +3.1% hist -0.46–+1.62% · other way +1.65% (n=11) |
| 4 | United Airlines UAL 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -2.7% hist -2.93–+3.29% · other way +7.01% (n=11) |
| 5 | ExxonMobil XOM 📈 chart | Equity | ▲ +2.2% hist +0.55–+1.49% · other way -1.1% (n=12) |
| 6 | Chevron CVX 📈 chart | Equity | ▲ +2.0% hist +0.7–+1.29% · other way +0.62% (n=12) |
| 7 | Delta DAL 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -2.3% hist -2.11–+1.78% · other way +6.63% (n=11) |
| 8 | Nasdaq 100 NDXon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Index | ▼ -1.1% hist -0.61–-0.36% · other way +0.07% (n=11) |
| 9 | Tech sector XLK 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -1.0% hist -0.63–+0.09% · other way +0.18% (n=11) |
| 10 | Wheat WHEATon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Commodity | ▲ +0.7% hist +0.13–+0.51% · other way +0.53% (n=11) |
| 11 | Gold XAUon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Commodity | ▼ -0.9% hist -0.59–-0.31% · other way +1.43% (n=11) |
| 12 | Corn CORNon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Commodity | ▲ +0.7% hist -0.21–+1.52% · other way +2.69% (n=11) |
| 13 | 30y Treasury yield DGS30 📈 chart | Rate | ▲ +9bp hist -0.86–+14.15% · other way +16.0% (n=12) |
| 14 | 10y Treasury yield DGS10 📈 chart | Rate | ▲ +8bp hist -2.17–+17.18% · other way +16.2% (n=12) |
Probable recommendation
Why we may diverge from history
Trust the cascade longs on CL and NG: history's negatives lean on 2014/2020 OPEC price-war glut windows, the opposite of this refinery-destroying surge; COIN/HOOD history is just Iran-window BTC beta.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Volatility VIX | LONG | +3.6% · 5d +2.9% | 69% | 34 | 0.34 | ✓ matches cascade |
| AMD AMD | SHORT | -1.3% · 5d -0.8% | 67% | 36 | 0.27 | ✓ matches cascade |
| XLE XLE | SHORT | -1.4% · 5d -0.5% | 64% | 33 | 0.26 | ⚠ differs |
| CL CL | SHORT | -3.9% · 5d -1.8% | 65% | 33 | 0.25 | ⚠ differs |
| HOOD HOOD | LONG | +5.7% · 5d -0.5% ↺ fades | 64% | 18 | 0.23 | ⚠ differs |
| USDJPY USDJPY | LONG | +1.4% · 5d +0.2% | 62% | 33 | 0.22 | ✓ matches cascade |
| BRENT BRENT | SHORT | -2.7% · 5d -1.4% | 61% | 33 | 0.19 | ⚠ differs |
| High-yield credit HYG | SHORT | -0.6% · 5d -0.2% | 62% | 33 | 0.19 | ✓ matches cascade |
| CORN CORN | LONG | +1.1% · 5d -0.5% ↺ fades | 59% | 33 | 0.18 | ✓ matches cascade |
| 10y yield DGS10 | LONG | +12bp · 5d +6bp | 59% | 40 | 0.18 | ✓ matches cascade |
| GBPUSD GBPUSD | SHORT | -0.6% · 5d -0.3% | 61% | 33 | 0.18 | ✓ matches cascade |
| MU MU | SHORT | -2.7% · 5d -2.8% | 60% | 36 | 0.17 | ✓ matches cascade |
| MSTR MSTR | LONG | +4.1% · 5d -3.3% ↺ fades | 61% | 33 | 0.16 | ⚠ differs |
| COIN COIN | LONG | +5.2% · 5d +0.9% | 59% | 18 | 0.15 | ⚠ differs |
Why this probability
Cat-6/sub-900mb direct Houston-corridor hit in one 6mo window is low though season-elevated. A base‑rate‑anchored prior, continuously scored against what actually happens — not a forecast.