What if a recession forces $500bn in goodwill writedowns across the S&P?
$500B of synchronized goodwill writedowns vaporize GAAP earnings but are non-cash — credit and cash flow matter more than the P&L print, so the durable move is multiple compression in expensive Nasdaq names, not a credit event. Closest analogue is the 2002 post-dotcom impairment wave (AOL Time Warner's $99B), which gutted reported EPS yet equities had largely pre-traded it. Skeptical: writedowns lag price; markets discount them early, so the cascade likely overstates fresh downside.
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 6–18 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 risk-off shock. A synchronized recession forces $500B in goodwill impairments across the S&P, vaporizing reported earnings overnight. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — Recession signal ▲ · Risk appetite ▼ — which propagate through our causal graph to the markets below.