What if El Niño dries Southern Africa and slashes the maize crop?
An El Niño-driven mid-season drought devastates South African and Zambian maize, flipping the region to large import needs and spiking white-maize prices.
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. An El Niño-driven mid-season drought devastates South African and Zambian maize, flipping the region to large import needs and spiking white-maize prices. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — Corn ▲ · EM currencies ▼ · Climate/crop supply ▲ · Food inflation ▲ — 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 | Corn CORNon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Commodity | ▲ +0.8% hist -2.42–+1.48% · other way +0.75% (n=9) |
| 2 | Wheat WHEATon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Commodity | ▲ +0.5% hist -0.92–+0.48% · other way -5.55% (n=9) |
| 3 | Turkish lira TRY 📈 chart | FX | ▼ -0.4% hist -0.32–+0.01% · other way +1.31% (n=8) |
| 4 | Indian rupee INR 📈 chart | FX | ▼ -0.3% hist -0.21–-0.11% · other way +0.47% (n=8) |
| 5 | Chinese yuan CNY 📈 chart | FX | ▼ -0.1% hist -0.24–+0.01% · other way +0.03% (n=8) |
Probable recommendation
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CNY CNY | SHORT | -0.1% · 5d -0.1% | 64% | 33 | 0.27 | ✓ matches cascade |
| WHEAT WHEAT | SHORT | -1.0% · 5d -0.5% | 64% | 33 | 0.25 | ⚠ differs |
| Volatility VIX | LONG | +3.5% · 5d +0.8% | 61% | 33 | 0.19 | · |
| Gold XAU | LONG | +0.6% · 5d -0.3% ↺ fades | 58% | 33 | 0.14 | · |
| 10y yield DGS10 | SHORT | 0bp · 5d +1bp ↺ fades | 56% | 40 | 0.12 | · |
| CORN CORN | SHORT | -2.7% · 5d -2.2% | 56% | 33 | 0.11 | ⚠ differs |
| US dollar DXY | SHORT | -0.1% · 5d +0.0% ↺ fades | 54% | 40 | 0.07 | · |
| Bitcoin BTC | LONG | +3.3% · 5d -0.6% ↺ fades | 53% | 32 | 0.05 | · |
| TRY TRY | LONG | +0.2% · 5d +1.2% | 44% | 33 | 0.00 | ⚠ differs |
| INR INR | LONG | +0.0% · 5d +0.3% | 47% | 33 | 0.00 | ⚠ differs |
| High-yield credit HYG | LONG | +0.3% · 5d +0.2% | 50% | 33 | 0.00 | · |