What if China's African swine fever wave deepens?
A deeper ASF cull of China's sow herd forces record pork imports and reprices global protein — long hogs/lean-meat and a China-CPI pork spike; the crude-collapse cascade is misattributed (ASF lifts grain/protein, it doesn't crush oil). Rhymes with the 2018-19 ASF epizootic that halved China's herd, doubled pork, and spiked CPI. Transmission: pulls in Brazilian/US/EU pork and soymeal feed demand. Forward: post-2019 herd consolidation into big biosecure farms means culls are contained faster, so the price impulse is real but shallower than the 2019 shock.
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. The ongoing 2026 ASF wave accelerates into a deeper cull of China's sow herd, forcing record pork imports and repricing global protein. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — China growth ▼ · Food inflation ▲ · 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 -6.72–+0.93% · other way +0.27% (n=12) |
| 2 | Gold XAUon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Commodity | ▲ +1.4% hist +0.22–+1.52% · other way +1.05% (n=12) |
| 3 | Energy sector XLEon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -1.4% hist -2.54–+0.12% · other way -3.66% (n=12) |
| 4 | United Airlines UAL 📈 chart | Equity | ▲ +1.2% hist +0.24–+0.83% · other way -1.43% (n=12) |
| 5 | ExxonMobil XOM 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -1.0% hist -0.71–-0.33% · other way -2.39% (n=12) |
| 6 | Chevron CVX 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -0.9% hist -1.67–+0.12% · other way -2.06% (n=12) |
| 7 | Delta DAL 📈 chart | Equity | ▲ +1.0% hist -0.12–+0.86% · other way -1.5% (n=12) |
| 8 | 30y Treasury yield DGS30 📈 chart | Rate | ▼ -6bp hist -9.65–+0.81% · other way +1.5% (n=12) |
| 9 | 10y Treasury yield DGS10 📈 chart | Rate | ▼ -5bp hist -11.12–+1.55% · other way +1.6% (n=12) |
| 10 | Solana SOLon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Crypto | ▼ -0.4% hist -8.44–+3.81% · other way +3.54% (n=12) |
| 11 | Tech sector XLK 📈 chart | Equity | ▲ +0.4% hist -0.2–+1.04% · other way +0.62% (n=12) |
| 12 | US dollar (DXY) DXYon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | FX | ▼ -0.4% hist -0.23–-0.11% · other way +0.04% (n=12) |
| 13 | USD/JPY USDJPYon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | FX | ▼ -0.4% hist -0.26–-0.09% · other way -0.07% (n=12) |
| 14 | 2y Treasury yield DGS2 | Rate | ▼ -4bp model prior · unmeasured |
Probable recommendation
Why we may diverge from history
Trust the cascade short on DGS10/DGS30: the +19bp 'rise' comes from 2022 hawkish-Fed yield windows — an ASF protein shock flooding pork imports is a growth-scare bid for duration, regime-biased history.
Historical precedent — what analogous events actually did
Across 37 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 | -1.7% · 5d -2.7% | 66% | 29 | 0.31 | ✓ matches cascade |
| CL CL | SHORT | -5.1% · 5d -3.6% | 66% | 29 | 0.30 | ✓ matches cascade |
| ETH ETH | SHORT | -6.1% · 5d -6.3% | 67% | 24 | 0.29 | ✓ matches cascade |
| CVX CVX | SHORT | -1.1% · 5d -2.3% | 63% | 37 | 0.24 | ✓ matches cascade |
| ARM ARM | SHORT | -8.1% · 5d -3.0% | 67% | 3 | 0.21 | ⚠ differs |
| XHB XHB | SHORT | -1.5% · 5d -0.6% | 63% | 28 | 0.21 | ⚠ differs |
| HOOD HOOD | SHORT | -7.8% · 5d -7.1% | 59% | 14 | 0.16 | ⚠ differs |
| SOL SOL | SHORT | -8.0% · 5d -12.5% | 60% | 17 | 0.15 | ✓ matches cascade |
| XLK XLK | LONG | +0.8% · 5d -0.2% ↺ fades | 59% | 29 | 0.15 | ✓ matches cascade |
| 10y yield DGS10 | SHORT | -8bp · 5d -7bp | 57% | 37 | 0.14 | ✓ matches cascade |
| KRW KRW | LONG | +0.4% · 5d +0.2% | 58% | 28 | 0.13 | ✓ matches cascade |
| KWEB KWEB | SHORT | -2.6% · 5d -2.6% | 56% | 28 | 0.12 | ✓ matches cascade |
| Bitcoin BTC | SHORT | -3.6% · 5d -5.2% | 58% | 28 | 0.12 | · |
| 30y yield DGS30 | SHORT | -6bp · 5d -5bp | 55% | 37 | 0.09 | ✓ matches cascade |
Why this probability
China ASF waves recur and intensify cyclically; deeper sow cull plausible within 6mo given ongoing 2026 wave. A base‑rate‑anchored prior, continuously scored against what actually happens — not a forecast.