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.
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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 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.