What if a global shipping-container shortage strands exporters?
An empty-box maldistribution squeeze strands exporters and lifts shipping cost — a supply-side inflation nudge that pushes breakevens and the Fed path slightly higher, flattening the curve and pressuring gold via real yields. Milder cousin of the 2021 container crunch. The cost falls on exporters needing boxes and on importers paying up; it is logistics friction, not demand. Forward angle: this is a small, self-correcting shock; the MIXED stance is right and the moves should stay sub-1% with quick reversion as boxes reposition.
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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 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. Loading the probability audit trail…
What it would mean
If this plays out, it is a mixed shock. Empty-box maldistribution after port chaos creates an acute container shortage, stranding exporters and inflating shipping costs. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — Growth surprise ▼ · Inflation surprise ▲ — which propagate through our causal graph to the markets below.