What if a US 30-year Treasury auction fails?
A 30y auction with collapsing bid-to-cover and heavy dealer takedown spikes long yields ~40bp and shakes global duration; the clean trade is bear-steepening with gold bid and equities pressured by a higher cost of capital. Rhymes with the soft auctions and 2023 long-end tantrum, plus the 2022 gilt-LDI spiral as the cautionary tail. Foreign reserve managers and dealers are the marginal bidders; a buyer's strike lifts term premium globally. Forward angle: supply-driven, fiscally-rooted — fade rallies in long duration until the term-premium repricing is digested.
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 risk-off shock. A US 30-year Treasury auction sees a record bid-to-cover collapse and dealer takedown, spiking long yields 40bps and shaking global duration. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — Dollar/reserve confidence ▼ · Fed policy path ▲ · Financial conditions ▲ — 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 | Gold XAUon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Commodity | ▲ +1.5% hist +0.44–+0.88% · other way -1.14% (n=12) |
| 2 | MicroStrategy MSTRon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▲ +1.4% hist -1.98–+1.2% · other way +19.6% (n=12) |
| 3 | Nasdaq 100 NDXon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Index | ▼ -1.1% hist -1.17–-0.19% · other way +1.5% (n=12) |
| 4 | 30y Treasury yield DGS30 📈 chart | Rate | ▲ +11bp hist +3.58–+6.8% · other way +4.6% (n=12) |
| 5 | 10y Treasury yield DGS10 📈 chart | Rate | ▲ +9bp hist +2.62–+6.11% · other way +5.3% (n=12) |
| 6 | Tech sector XLK 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -0.9% hist -0.61–-0.28% · other way +2.27% (n=12) |
| 7 | Bitcoin BTCon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Crypto | ▲ +0.8% hist -4.33–+3.85% · other way +1.4% (n=9) |
| 8 | S&P 500 SPXon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Index | ▼ -0.7% hist -1.01–+0.03% · other way +1.85% (n=12) |
| 9 | US dollar (DXY) DXYon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | FX | ▼ -0.6% hist -0.52–+0.23% · other way +0.48% (n=12) |
| 10 | Coinbase COINon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▲ +0.6% hist -3.14–+5.35% · other way +15.92% (n=7) |
| 11 | Volatility (VIX) VIXon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Vol | ▲ +0.5% hist -1.26–+3.42% · other way -4.46% (n=12) |
| 12 | EUR/USD EURUSDon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | FX | ▲ +0.6% hist -0.85–+0.66% · other way -0.3% (n=11) |
| 13 | High-yield credit HYG 📈 chart | Rate | ▼ -0.5% hist -0.95–+0.05% · other way -0.26% (n=11) |
| 14 | GBP/USD GBPUSDon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | FX | ▲ +0.5% hist -0.29–+0.32% · other way -0.1% (n=11) |
Probable recommendation
Why we may diverge from history
Trust the cascade short on NVDA: the +6.4% history leans on the idiosyncratic 2023 First-Republic AI-rally and a stale 2008 print; NVDA is driven by AI-capex, swamping any failed-auction duration channel.
Historical precedent — what analogous events actually did
Across 38 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| KRW KRW | SHORT | -1.7% · 5d +0.2% ↺ fades | 75% | 27 | 0.46 | ⚠ differs |
| MRVL MRVL | SHORT | -1.3% · 5d -3.8% | 70% | 28 | 0.33 | ✓ matches cascade |
| High-yield credit HYG | SHORT | -0.7% · 5d +0.0% ↺ fades | 69% | 25 | 0.32 | ✓ matches cascade |
| COIN COIN | LONG | +5.1% · 5d +5.6% | 71% | 8 | 0.28 | ✓ matches cascade |
| JPM JPM | SHORT | -1.0% · 5d -1.9% | 62% | 34 | 0.22 | ✓ matches cascade |
| MSTR MSTR | SHORT | -2.4% · 5d -2.5% | 63% | 28 | 0.21 | ⚠ differs |
| AMD AMD | SHORT | -2.0% · 5d -2.9% | 62% | 34 | 0.20 | ✓ matches cascade |
| GBPUSD GBPUSD | SHORT | -0.5% · 5d -0.0% | 60% | 27 | 0.19 | ⚠ differs |
| Bitcoin BTC | SHORT | -5.2% · 5d -3.8% | 61% | 11 | 0.17 | ⚠ differs |
| USDJPY USDJPY | LONG | +0.8% · 5d -0.3% ↺ fades | 58% | 28 | 0.15 | ⚠ differs |
| Gold XAU | LONG | +0.1% · 5d -0.2% ↺ fades | 58% | 28 | 0.14 | ✓ matches cascade |
| EURUSD EURUSD | SHORT | -1.1% · 5d -0.3% | 56% | 27 | 0.12 | ⚠ differs |
| XHB XHB | SHORT | -0.8% · 5d +0.2% ↺ fades | 56% | 27 | 0.11 | ✓ matches cascade |
| ASML ASML | SHORT | -0.9% · 5d -3.2% | 58% | 28 | 0.11 | ✓ matches cascade |
Why this probability
Weak auctions/tails recur amid heavy supply; an outright failed 30yr with 40bps jump is rarer. A base‑rate‑anchored prior, continuously scored against what actually happens — not a forecast.