Central Banks & Macro risk-off · 0–6 months
A what‑if from the future

What if China's mortgage boycott flares up again?

A second mortgage-boycott wave attacks bank asset quality directly, so the actionable read is China HY property credit and KWEB/Alibaba lower, dragging copper and AUD as the demand proxy. The crypto/Nasdaq legs in the cascade are spurious co-movement — this is a domestic balance-sheet shock, not a global liquidity event. Closest analogue is the summer-2022 boycott plus Kaisa contagion, where developer dollar bonds repriced violently but spillover stayed regional. Forward: weaker household balance sheets than 2022 mean less policy room to socialize losses.

17%
our model probability
over 0–6 months
prediction markets — the market's odds
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Anchored to measured history 17% · 90% range 6–27% · 40 dated precedents behind it — a wider range means thinner evidence

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 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…

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What it would mean

If this plays out, it is a risk-off shock. A fresh nationwide wave of homebuyers halts mortgage payments on stalled pre-sold units, threatening bank asset quality. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — China growth ▼ · Credit spreads ▲ · Risk appetite ▼ — which propagate through our causal graph to the markets below.

Methodology. Probability and impact are anchored to history and scored against what actually happens — wins and losses, in public, at Reality Check. Market odds live from Polymarket & Kalshi. By Vikas Singh, Quantitative Strategist. Updated 2026-08-13.