What if El Nino collapses Peru's anchovy catch?
An El Nino anchovy crash is a fishmeal/feed shock — trade it long soymeal as the substitute and through aquaculture-feed cost, not generic wheat. Rhymes with 2023, when Peru cancelled its first anchovy season and fishmeal prices spiked, feeding salmon and hog rations worldwide. Peru is the dominant fishmeal exporter, so transmission runs to Norwegian salmon and Asian aquaculture margins; the wheat/corn proxy understates soymeal and overstates milling grains.
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 strong El Nino crashes Peru's anchovy biomass, halting fishmeal exports and roiling global aquaculture feed. 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 | ▲ +0.6% hist -0.9–+0.5% · other way -5.55% (n=9) |
| 2 | Corn CORNon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Commodity | ▲ +0.6% hist -2.58–+1.38% · other way +0.75% (n=9) |
| 3 | Semiconductors SMHon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -0.1% hist -0.29–+0.5% · other way -1.88% (n=9) |
| 4 | Natural gas NGon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Commodity | ▲ +0.1% hist -3.18–+0.67% · 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
Anchovy crashes need strong El Nino; 2026 lacks one, so closure unlikely in 6-18m window. A base‑rate‑anchored prior, continuously scored against what actually happens — not a forecast.