What if a global recession collapses the copper price?
A synchronized China-property and global recession shock craters copper below incentive levels — short Freeport, short AUD, wider credit; copper-as-growth-tell makes this the cleanest macro short in the batch. Rhymes with the Aug-2015 China 'Black Monday,' when copper broke to multi-year lows and AUD/EM sold off hard. Transmission: Australia (iron/copper to China) and Chilean/Peruvian fiscal balances take the hit; China internet de-rates. Forward: with copper already priced for an energy-transition deficit, positioning is long — a demand shock unwinds crowded length violently.
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 6–18 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. A synchronized China property and global recession shock craters copper demand, sending prices spiraling below incentive levels. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — Copper ▼ · China growth ▼ · Recession signal ▲ — which propagate through our causal graph to the markets below.