What if the US barred outbound investment in Chinese tech?
An outbound-investment ban into Chinese tech/AI is a slow capital-flow squeeze on China venture/growth funding, mildly risk-off for the tariff-exposed sleeve and a drag on Alibaba and the yuan, but the macro impulse is modest versus an outright tariff. Closest rhyme is the Aug-2023 Biden outbound EO, which had muted immediate market impact. Skeptic's note: the channel is primary capital, not trade flows, so the equity cascade is overstated — the real effect is a higher China cost of capital that compounds over years, not a gap day.
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. The US restricts outbound investment into Chinese tech and AI. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — Trade tension ▲ — 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 | Nasdaq 100 NDXon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Index | ▼ -1.5% hist -1.0–-0.39% · other way -0.29% (n=12) |
| 2 | Semiconductors SMHon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -1.3% hist -0.94–-0.02% · other way +2.4% (n=12) |
| 3 | Nvidia NVDAon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -1.2% hist -1.67–+1.65% · other way +4.34% (n=12) |
| 4 | TSMC TSMon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -1.1% hist -1.2–+0.84% · other way +3.35% (n=12) |
| 5 | Alibaba BABAon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -0.9% hist -0.95–+0.54% · other way -2.98% (n=12) |
| 6 | Tech sector XLK 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -1.0% hist -0.72–-0.22% · other way -0.38% (n=12) |
| 7 | AMD AMDon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -0.9% hist -0.98–+0.63% · other way -1.13% (n=12) |
| 8 | Broadcom AVGOon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -0.9% hist -1.1–+1.24% · other way +1.14% (n=12) |
| 9 | Micron MUon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -0.9% hist -3.98–+0.75% · other way +5.45% (n=12) |
| 10 | Marvell MRVLon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -0.9% hist -0.77–+0.37% · other way +1.84% (n=12) |
| 11 | ASML ASMLon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -0.8% hist -2.74–+0.8% · other way -0.64% (n=12) |
| 12 | Chinese yuan CNY 📈 chart | FX | ▼ -0.7% hist -0.73–-0.09% · other way -0.81% (n=12) |
| 13 | Qualcomm QCOMon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -0.6% hist -3.85–+0.73% · other way -0.58% (n=12) |
| 14 | Intel INTCon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -0.5% hist -8.57–+0.06% · other way -5.61% (n=12) |
Probable recommendation
Why we may diverge from history
Trust the cascade's SHORT on MSTR/SOL/AVGO: their +40-65% tariff-window returns are BTC-bull and AI-beta noise swamping the policy channel; an outbound-investment ban into Chinese tech won't reproduce those crypto-led spikes.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| INTC INTC | SHORT | -6.3% · 5d -3.4% | 81% | 39 | 0.61 | ✓ matches cascade |
| ETH ETH | SHORT | -7.3% · 5d -6.1% | 71% | 38 | 0.33 | ✓ matches cascade |
| XCU XCU | SHORT | -1.4% · 5d -0.9% | 70% | 39 | 0.32 | ✓ matches cascade |
| GBPUSD GBPUSD | LONG | +0.4% · 5d -0.1% ↺ fades | 67% | 39 | 0.30 | ⚠ differs |
| KWEB KWEB | SHORT | -1.0% · 5d -0.5% | 65% | 39 | 0.27 | ✓ matches cascade |
| QCOM QCOM | SHORT | -3.1% · 5d -2.7% | 67% | 39 | 0.25 | ✓ matches cascade |
| MU MU | SHORT | -3.2% · 5d -2.9% | 65% | 39 | 0.23 | ✓ matches cascade |
| TRY TRY | SHORT | -1.8% · 5d +0.7% ↺ fades | 65% | 39 | 0.23 | ✓ matches cascade |
| KRW KRW | LONG | +0.5% · 5d +0.1% | 63% | 39 | 0.23 | ⚠ differs |
| Gold XAU | LONG | +1.3% · 5d +0.1% | 63% | 39 | 0.23 | · |
| EURUSD EURUSD | LONG | +0.4% · 5d +0.1% | 63% | 39 | 0.22 | ⚠ differs |
| SOL SOL | SHORT | -7.9% · 5d -8.4% | 64% | 37 | 0.21 | ✓ matches cascade |
| FCX FCX | SHORT | -1.6% · 5d -1.2% | 60% | 39 | 0.17 | ✓ matches cascade |
| CNY CNY | SHORT | -0.3% · 5d -0.2% | 58% | 39 | 0.16 | ✓ matches cascade |
Why this probability
Outbound-investment rules already partly live; expansion to AI/tech likely near-term. A base‑rate‑anchored prior, continuously scored against what actually happens — not a forecast.