What if Rhine water levels drop too low for barge freight again?
A severe drought drops the Rhine below navigable levels for weeks (as in 2018/2022), throttling barge freight of coal, chemicals and grains and feeding German industrial and food cost pressure.
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 drops the Rhine below navigable levels for weeks (as in 2018/2022), throttling barge freight of coal, chemicals and grains and feeding German industrial and food cost pressure. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — Natural gas ▲ · Climate/crop supply ▲ · Food inflation ▲ · Industrial demand ▼ — 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 -0.01–+0.47% · other way +2.29% (n=12) |
| 2 | Corn CORNon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Commodity | ▲ +0.7% hist +-0.0–+0.52% · other way +4.84% (n=12) |
| 3 | Natural gas NGon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Commodity | ▲ +0.4% hist -5.67–+1.38% · other way +8.78% (n=12) |
| 4 | Freeport (copper) FCX 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -0.3% hist -0.72–+0.97% · other way +6.98% (n=12) |
| 5 | Semiconductors SMHon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -0.2% hist -0.28–+0.58% · other way +0.06% (n=12) |
| 6 | Copper XCUon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Commodity | ▼ -0.1% hist -1.09–+2.12% · other way -0.9% (n=12) |
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 | -5.0% · 5d -2.8% | 67% | 32 | 0.34 | ⚠ differs |
| Gold XAU | LONG | +0.6% · 5d -0.2% ↺ fades | 63% | 32 | 0.24 | · |
| SMH SMH | LONG | +0.6% · 5d -0.6% ↺ fades | 61% | 32 | 0.19 | ⚠ differs |
| High-yield credit HYG | SHORT | -0.1% · 5d +0.2% ↺ fades | 60% | 30 | 0.14 | · |
| WHEAT WHEAT | SHORT | -0.3% · 5d -1.4% | 57% | 32 | 0.12 | ⚠ differs |
| 10y yield DGS10 | LONG | +5bp · 5d +2bp | 55% | 40 | 0.09 | · |
| US dollar DXY | LONG | +0.1% · 5d +0.0% | 53% | 40 | 0.05 | · |
| XCU XCU | LONG | +2.1% · 5d +0.5% | 52% | 32 | 0.04 | ⚠ differs |
| CORN CORN | SHORT | -0.3% · 5d -1.8% | 41% | 32 | 0.00 | ⚠ differs |
| FCX FCX | LONG | +1.2% · 5d +0.3% | 50% | 32 | 0.00 | ⚠ differs |
| Volatility VIX | SHORT | -0.7% · 5d -0.3% | 50% | 32 | 0.00 | · |
| Bitcoin BTC | LONG | +3.3% · 5d +0.2% | 50% | 26 | 0.00 | · |