What if Falling ore grades lift the global copper cost curve?
Declining head grades at aging Chilean and Peruvian mines raise all-in costs across the industry, structurally supporting a higher copper incentive price.
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 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.
What it would mean
If this plays out, it is a mixed shock. Declining head grades at aging Chilean and Peruvian mines raise all-in costs across the industry, structurally supporting a higher copper incentive price. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — Copper ▲ · Industrial demand ▲ · Inflation expectations ▲ · 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.
| Market | Class | Projected move | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Freeport (copper) FCX 📈 chart | Equity | ▲ +0.7% hist -2.44–+2.43% · other way -2.56% (n=12) |
| 2 | Copper XCUon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Commodity | ▲ +0.6% hist -0.3–+1.15% · other way -2.26% (n=12) |
| 3 | 30y Treasury yield DGS30 📈 chart | Rate | ▲ +1bp hist -10.5–+26.54% · other way -3.8% (n=12) |
| 4 | 10y Treasury yield DGS10 📈 chart | Rate | ▲ +1bp hist -9.21–+17.08% · other way -7.4% (n=12) |
Probable recommendation
Historical precedent — what analogous events actually did
Across 13 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 30y yield DGS30 | LONG | +25bp · 5d +9bp | 76% | 12 | 0.48 | ✓ matches cascade |
| Gold XAU | SHORT | -2.7% · 5d -0.2% | 71% | 7 | 0.35 | · |
| FCX FCX | SHORT | -3.1% · 5d -2.4% | 71% | 7 | 0.33 | ⚠ differs |
| 10y yield DGS10 | LONG | +17bp · 5d +7bp | 63% | 13 | 0.24 | ✓ matches cascade |
| Volatility VIX | SHORT | -2.0% · 5d -3.6% | 62% | 8 | 0.17 | · |
| XCU XCU | SHORT | -0.7% · 5d -0.4% | 57% | 7 | 0.13 | ⚠ differs |
| US dollar DXY | LONG | +0.3% · 5d +0.1% | 56% | 13 | 0.10 | · |
| High-yield credit HYG | SHORT | -0.4% · 5d -0.2% | 57% | 7 | 0.09 | · |
| Bitcoin BTC | LONG | +3.0% · 5d -2.8% ↺ fades | 25% | 4 | 0.00 | · |