What if a European head of state is assassinated by an extremist?
A European head-of-state assassination spikes regional instability: VIX bids, Nasdaq/high-beta sell, credit widens, and peripheral-EU spreads (BTP-Bund) are the local expression. The market rhyme is the muted reaction to past European political shocks (e.g. 2017 French-election risk), which faded once institutional continuity held. Transmission: EU integration means contagion runs through sovereign spreads and the euro. Forward angle: with the ECB backstop (TPI) in place, the sovereign-spread leg is more contained than a pre-2012 episode — fade the broad vol, watch periphery for the real signal.
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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 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. Loading the probability audit trail…
What it would mean
If this plays out, it is a risk-off shock. A European head of state is assassinated by an extremist, spiking regional instability. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — Geopolitical risk ▲ — which propagate through our causal graph to the markets below.