What if Russia and Ukraine sign a ceasefire?
Mirror of the war trades: a Ukraine ceasefire unwinds the risk premium — VIX -14, Brent down on eased supply fear, Nasdaq/S&P rally as risk-parity re-levers. The rhyme is the Jan-1991 Desert Storm open, when crude collapsed and equities ripped once tail uncertainty resolved. Transmission: sanctions relief reopens Russian energy/grain to Europe, easing breakevens, while reconstruction is a EUR-positive, EU-industrials and steel bid; forward angle — much Russian oil already reaches market via shadow flows, so the crude downside is smaller than headlines imply; the bigger move is in European gas and equity risk premia.
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…
What it would mean
If this plays out, it is a risk-on shock. Russia and Ukraine sign a ceasefire and open sanctions-relief and reconstruction talks. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — Geopolitical risk ▼ · Oil supply risk ▼ — which propagate through our causal graph to the markets below.