What if Copper smelter TC/RCs turn negative in concentrate famine?
A wave of new Chinese smelter capacity meets flat mine supply, driving treatment/refining charges negative; smelters cut runs, tightening refined copper and lifting price.
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 mixed shock. A wave of new Chinese smelter capacity meets flat mine supply, driving treatment/refining charges negative; smelters cut runs, tightening refined copper and lifting price. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — Copper ▲ · China growth ▲ · Industrial demand ▲ · Risk appetite ▲ — 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 | Freeport (copper) FCX 📈 chart | Equity | ▲ +1.0% hist -6.18–+6.52% · other way +2.06% (n=12) |
| 2 | Copper XCUon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Commodity | ▲ +0.9% hist -0.13–+1.63% · other way -0.23% (n=12) |
| 3 | China internet KWEBon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▲ +0.2% hist -4.91–+2.37% · other way -3.24% (n=12) |
| 4 | Alibaba BABAon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▲ +0.2% hist -7.84–+3.54% · other way -2.61% (n=12) |
Probable recommendation
Historical precedent — what analogous events actually did
Across 9 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BABA BABA | SHORT | -7.6% · 5d -1.2% | 100% | 4 | 0.70 | ⚠ differs |
| High-yield credit HYG | SHORT | -1.9% · 5d -0.2% | 87% | 7 | 0.65 | · |
| KWEB KWEB | SHORT | -4.9% · 5d -1.4% | 100% | 4 | 0.64 | ⚠ differs |
| Volatility VIX | SHORT | -6.0% · 5d -3.0% | 88% | 8 | 0.47 | · |
| FCX FCX | SHORT | -7.5% · 5d -2.9% | 60% | 7 | 0.17 | ⚠ differs |
| 10y yield DGS10 | LONG | +6bp · 5d +6bp | 58% | 9 | 0.14 | · |
| US dollar DXY | LONG | +0.6% · 5d -0.2% ↺ fades | 58% | 9 | 0.13 | · |
| Bitcoin BTC | SHORT | -1.0% · 5d -3.2% | 56% | 4 | 0.08 | · |
| Gold XAU | LONG | +1.1% · 5d -0.3% ↺ fades | 53% | 7 | 0.05 | · |
| XCU XCU | LONG | +0.8% · 5d +0.4% | 33% | 7 | 0.00 | ✓ matches cascade |