What if drought slashes New Zealand's milk production?
An NZ dairy drought is a whole-milk-powder and butter trade — long WMP at the GDT auction and watch the NZD and Fonterra payout, not CBOT wheat. Rhymes with the 2013 NZ drought that drove WMP to record highs and lifted global dairy. New Zealand dominates internationally-traded dairy, so transmission runs to Chinese WMP imports and EU butter substitution; the grain proxy is the wrong commodity for a milk-supply shock.
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 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. 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. A severe drought slashes New Zealand milk production, spiking global whole-milk-powder and butter prices. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — Climate/crop supply ▲ · Food inflation ▲ — 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 | Wheat WHEATon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Commodity | ▲ +0.7% hist -0.84–+0.53% · other way -5.55% (n=9) |
| 2 | Corn CORNon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Commodity | ▲ +0.7% hist -2.52–+1.41% · other way +0.75% (n=9) |
| 3 | Semiconductors SMHon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -0.2% hist -0.3–+0.49% · other way -1.88% (n=9) |
| 4 | Natural gas NGon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Commodity | ▲ +0.2% hist -3.17–+0.68% · other way +0.52% (n=9) |
Probable recommendation
Historical precedent — what analogous events actually did
Across 40 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NG NG | SHORT | -2.8% · 5d -4.2% | 69% | 33 | 0.36 | ⚠ differs |
| WHEAT WHEAT | SHORT | -1.0% · 5d -0.5% | 64% | 33 | 0.25 | ⚠ differs |
| Volatility VIX | LONG | +3.5% · 5d +0.8% | 61% | 33 | 0.19 | · |
| Gold XAU | LONG | +0.6% · 5d -0.3% ↺ fades | 58% | 33 | 0.14 | · |
| 10y yield DGS10 | SHORT | 0bp · 5d +1bp ↺ fades | 56% | 40 | 0.12 | · |
| CORN CORN | SHORT | -2.7% · 5d -2.2% | 56% | 33 | 0.11 | ⚠ differs |
| SMH SMH | LONG | +0.6% · 5d -1.4% ↺ fades | 56% | 33 | 0.10 | ⚠ differs |
| US dollar DXY | SHORT | -0.1% · 5d +0.0% ↺ fades | 54% | 40 | 0.07 | · |
| Bitcoin BTC | LONG | +3.3% · 5d -0.6% ↺ fades | 53% | 32 | 0.05 | · |
| High-yield credit HYG | LONG | +0.3% · 5d +0.2% | 50% | 33 | 0.00 | · |
Why this probability
NZ dairy drought episodic, lifts WMP; no strong El Nino in 2026 lowers severe-drought odds. A base‑rate‑anchored prior, continuously scored against what actually happens — not a forecast.