What if low water paralyses the Rhine, Mississippi and Panama Canal?
Low water on the Rhine/Mississippi/Panama is a logistics-cost and trade-friction shock: barge constraints plus reroutings lift crude/refined products and add a tariff-like tax that hits tech supply chains (Nasdaq, semis). Rhymes with the 2022 Rhine low-water episode and 2023-24 Panama drought draft cuts that spiked container/freight rates. Forward angle: the inflation-expectations and real-yield leg is the durable trade; the equity hit is transient once cargo reroutes.
Every number ships with its receipt — the odds, the range, the precedents, and a public grade at Reality Check. The statistical machinery that produces it is proprietary.
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 mixed shock. Low water on the Rhine/Mississippi/Panama paralyzes critical shipping arteries. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — Trade tension ▲ · Inflation expectations ▲ · Oil supply risk ▲ — which propagate through our causal graph to the markets below.