What if China embargoes tungsten and bismuth exports?
A hard tungsten/bismuth embargo hits US munitions and carbide tooling, lifting tungsten APT prices and helping ex-China miners (Almonty) and defense primes on supply-security spend - Lockheed +0.7% is directionally right, the broad semis -2.9% less so. Rhymes with China's Feb-2025 tungsten export controls and the 2010 rare-earth embargo on Japan. China dominates tungsten supply; the forward angle is munitions demand is price-inelastic in a rearmament cycle, so this is a defense-industrial cost shock more than an equity-beta event.
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. China imposes a hard export embargo on tungsten and bismuth, hitting US munitions and hard-metal tooling supply chains. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — Defense spending ▲ · Trade tension ▲ · Industrial demand ▼ — 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 | Nasdaq 100 NDXon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Index | ▼ -2.1% hist -1.24–-0.69% · other way +1.81% (n=11) |
| 2 | Semiconductors SMHon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -2.0% hist -1.29–-0.64% · other way +2.75% (n=11) |
| 3 | Nvidia NVDAon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -1.7% hist -1.14–-0.32% · other way +10.49% (n=11) |
| 4 | TSMC TSMon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -1.6% hist -1.73–-0.25% · other way +4.87% (n=11) |
| 5 | Alibaba BABAon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -1.3% hist -0.85–-0.46% · other way -5.17% (n=8) |
| 6 | Tech sector XLK 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -1.4% hist -0.84–-0.27% · other way +2.57% (n=11) |
| 7 | AMD AMDon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -1.3% hist -1.72–+1.56% · other way +7.06% (n=11) |
| 8 | Broadcom AVGOon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -1.3% hist -1.21–+1.46% · other way +2.05% (n=9) |
| 9 | Micron MUon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -1.3% hist -1.88–+0.04% · other way +7.93% (n=11) |
| 10 | Marvell MRVLon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -1.3% hist -2.49–+0.22% · other way +12.35% (n=11) |
| 11 | ASML ASMLon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -1.3% hist -3.56–+0.83% · other way +2.4% (n=11) |
| 12 | Chinese yuan CNY 📈 chart | FX | ▼ -1.0% hist -0.83–-0.17% · other way -0.17% (n=10) |
| 13 | Qualcomm QCOMon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -0.9% hist -2.89–+0.66% · other way -0.53% (n=11) |
| 14 | Lockheed LMT 📈 chart | Equity | ▲ +0.7% hist -0.06–+1.1% · other way -4.66% (n=12) |
Probable recommendation
Why we may diverge from history
Trust the cascade short on COIN/MSTR: only 4-9 analogues dominated by the 2025 Israel-Iran and tariff BTC-bull spikes (+63%/+30%) — regime-contaminated thin sample, no tungsten/bismuth crypto channel exists.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| TRY TRY | SHORT | -1.7% · 5d +0.3% ↺ fades | 74% | 36 | 0.39 | ✓ matches cascade |
| INTC INTC | SHORT | -4.2% · 5d -1.7% | 66% | 37 | 0.29 | ✓ matches cascade |
| CNY CNY | SHORT | -0.3% · 5d -0.1% | 62% | 36 | 0.24 | ✓ matches cascade |
| COIN COIN | LONG | +4.7% · 5d +3.2% | 63% | 19 | 0.21 | ⚠ differs |
| XCU XCU | SHORT | -1.4% · 5d -1.0% | 62% | 36 | 0.20 | ✓ matches cascade |
| ETH ETH | SHORT | -2.9% · 5d -4.2% | 62% | 31 | 0.20 | ✓ matches cascade |
| 10y yield DGS10 | LONG | +12bp · 5d +7bp | 60% | 39 | 0.19 | · |
| MRVL MRVL | SHORT | -1.7% · 5d -2.9% | 62% | 36 | 0.17 | ✓ matches cascade |
| FCX FCX | SHORT | -3.0% · 5d -1.9% | 61% | 36 | 0.17 | ✓ matches cascade |
| High-yield credit HYG | SHORT | -0.4% · 5d -0.2% | 61% | 36 | 0.17 | · |
| AVGO AVGO | LONG | +2.0% · 5d -2.1% ↺ fades | 59% | 36 | 0.15 | ⚠ differs |
| KWEB KWEB | SHORT | -0.8% · 5d -2.0% | 59% | 35 | 0.15 | ✓ matches cascade |
| AUD AUD | SHORT | -0.8% · 5d -0.4% | 59% | 36 | 0.13 | ✓ matches cascade |
| XLK XLK | LONG | +0.2% · 5d -0.7% ↺ fades | 57% | 36 | 0.11 | ⚠ differs |
Why this probability
China minor-metal embargoes recur (tungsten controls live); full hard ban a notable escalation. A base‑rate‑anchored prior, continuously scored against what actually happens — not a forecast.