🛢 Energy & Commodities mixed · 1–3 years
A what‑if from the future

What if Dispatchable-capacity scarcity revives coal-plant life-extensions?

Reliability fears and load growth force operators to delay coal retirements and extend plant lives to keep firm capacity online, a bearish climate signal but a grid-reliability stopgap.

18%
our model probability
over 1–3 years
prediction markets — wisdom of the crowd
loading live odds…
Empirically anchored 18% · 90% range 8–28% · 37 analogues · measured class energy 99% in 3 yr · 3% held back for the unknown
how we built this number — every step
Measured class rate — energy ≈1.4869/yr → 99% in 3 yr99%
Analyst prior · editorial share 18% of the class18%
Pooled · weight 86%18%
Crowd — no liquid market
Reserve 3% · no extremizing (×1.0)18%
Published18%

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 1–3 years 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.

loading the timeline…

What it would mean

If this plays out, it is a mixed shock. Reliability fears and load growth force operators to delay coal retirements and extend plant lives to keep firm capacity online, a bearish climate signal but a grid-reliability stopgap. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — Natural gas ▲ · Industrial demand ▲ · Inflation surprise ▲ · 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.

MarketClassProjected move
1Freeport (copper) FCX 📈 chartEquity▲ +0.3%
hist -0.44–+1.39% · other way +7.24% (n=12)
2Natural gas NGon Hyperliquid 📈 chartCommodity▲ +0.2%
hist -6.79–+2.01% · other way +3.45% (n=12)
3Copper XCUon Hyperliquid 📈 chartCommodity▲ +0.1%
hist -0.03–+0.27% · other way -0.6% (n=12)
430y Treasury yield DGS30 📈 chartRate▲ +1bp
hist -2.87–+7.17% · other way +8.1% (n=12)
510y Treasury yield DGS10 📈 chartRate▲ +1bp
hist -2.13–+5.58% · other way +10.0% (n=12)

Probable recommendation

If the scenario above plays out, the probable cross‑asset positioning → a scenario‑conditional read, not personalized investment advice
Short
For a common-man portfolio: Mixed for a typical portfolio — the move is more about rotation than direction. Favour the winners over the losers below rather than net exposure.
Also moves (not yet on Hyperliquid): Freeport (copper) +0.3% · 30y Treasury yield +1bp · 10y Treasury yield +1bp

Historical precedent — what analogous events actually did

Across 37 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.

PJM grid emergency during Winter Storm Elliott 2022-12 Texas grid failure during Winter Storm Uri 2021-02 Northeast blackout cascading grid failure hits ~55 million 2003-08 Silver Thursday 1980-03 Gold peaks at $850 1980-01 1979 Iranian Revolution oil shock 1979-01 Gold tops $4,000 and silver spikes past $50 in historic squeeze 2025-10 Gold tops $3,000 for the first time amid tariff and rate-cut fears 2025-03 Henry Hub natural gas falls to an all-time inflation-adjusted low on record output 2024-11 Gold tops $2,500 for the first time on Fed rate-cut bets 2024-08 Niger coup d'etat 2023-07 August 2022 hot CPI 2022-09 Powell's hawkish 'pain' speech at Jackson Hole 2022-08 Turkish lira record low on rate cuts 2021-11 European gas crisis intraday record spike 2021-10 California rolling blackouts during a record heatwave 2020-08 Gold closes above $2,000/oz for the first time 2020-08 Norilsk Nickel Arctic diesel spill 2020-05 February 2018 hot wage print triggers rate scare 2018-02 North Korea sixth nuclear test 2017-09 North Korea 'fire and fury' nuclear scare 2017-08 Gold futures velocity-logic flash crash 2014-01 Gold all-time peak of $1,921/oz 2011-09 Egyptian revolution / Mubarak uprising 2011-01 Crude oil all-time high 2008-07 Henry Hub natural gas spot price peaks during 2008 commodity boom 2008-07 Platinum hits all-time record near $2,290 on South African power crisis 2008-03 South Africa Eskom power emergency spikes platinum/PGMs 2008-01 Amaranth Advisors natural-gas blowup 2006-09 Soviet August coup attempt against Gorbachev 1991-08 Argentina hyperinflation peak / Alfonsin early handover 1989-07 Chernobyl disaster 1986-04 Iran hostage crisis / US freezes Iranian assets 1979-11 Volcker Saturday Night Special 1979-10 Three Mile Island partial meltdown 1979-03 Iranian Revolution oil shock 1978-12 Nixon Shock 1971-08
AssetHistory saysAbnormal (20d · 5d)HitnConfidencevs cascade
NG NGSHORT-6.1% · 5d -3.7%64%26 0.26⚠ differs
Volatility VIXLONG+4.2% · 5d +4.7%63%27 0.21·
Gold XAUSHORT-1.1% · 5d -0.7%56%26 0.12·
US dollar DXYLONG+0.3% · 5d +0.2%54%37 0.06·
High-yield credit HYGSHORT-0.2% · 5d +0.1% ↺ fades54%24 0.06·
FCX FCXLONG+1.2% · 5d +0.7%53%26 0.05✓ matches cascade
XCU XCULONG+0.2% · 5d -0.2% ↺ fades45%26 0.00✓ matches cascade
30y yield DGS30LONG+6bp · 5d +4bp47%36 0.00✓ matches cascade
10y yield DGS10LONG+5bp · 5d +3bp50%37 0.00✓ matches cascade
Bitcoin BTCLONG+0.5% · 5d -0.8% ↺ fades39%17 0.00·

Methodology. Probability and impact are anchored to history and scored against what actually happens — wins and losses, in public, at Reality Check. Crowd odds live from Polymarket & Kalshi. By Vikas Singh, Quantitative Strategist. Updated 2026-07-03.