What if China bans exports of all rare-earth magnets?
A total NdFeB magnet ban plus a tech-transfer cutoff is the maximal rare-earth weapon: it idles EV-motor, wind and missile lines, and the cleanest read is China megacaps and the semis/Nasdaq complex selling on supply-chain and retaliation risk while the yuan absorbs the brunt. Mirrors China's April 2025 rare-earth controls, which jolted defense and EV supply names. The West depends on China for ~90% of processed magnets; there is no near-term substitute. Forward angle: defense primes and ex-China magnet miners (MP, Lynas) are the asymmetric long the cascade omits.
Every number ships with its receipt — the odds, the range, the precedents, and a public grade at Reality Check. The statistical machinery that produces it is proprietary.
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. China extends controls to all NdFeB magnets and cuts off processing technology, halting Western EV-motor, wind-turbine, and missile lines. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — Defense spending ▲ · Industrial demand ▲ · Trade tension ▲ — which propagate through our causal graph to the markets below.