What if Russia bans palladium exports in retaliation?
A Norilsk palladium export ban severs ~40% of global supply to automakers — the direct move is palladium and platinum (substitute) sharply higher, hitting auto OEM margins; the cascade's Nasdaq -4.8%/semis -3.3% is a mis-mapped tariff template, not a palladium channel. Rhymes with palladium's 2014 Russia-sanction scare and the 2024 G7-sanction jump to ~$1,200. Forward angle: post-2022 stockpiling and EV-driven demand erosion mean buyers are better hedged than in 2014, capping the squeeze; Europe (largest auto exposure) is the pressure point.
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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-off shock. Moscow bars Norilsk palladium exports in retaliation, severing forty percent of global supply to automakers. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — Geopolitical risk ▲ · Industrial demand ▲ · Trade tension ▲ — which propagate through our causal graph to the markets below.