What if food-price riots erupt across the Sahel?
Sahel bread riots are real political risk but localized; the asset response is regional sovereign/FX stress and a modest wheat bid, not a 3.7% Nasdaq selloff. Rhymes with the 2007-08 and 2011 food-price riots that toppled governments across North Africa — Arab Spring being the canonical analogue cited. Transmission runs through CFA-franc states and France/EU exposure plus wheat importers; the US-equity-vol cascade is wildly oversized for a Sahel food shock.
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 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. 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 risk-off shock. Surging staple prices ignite bread riots and political unrest across multiple Sahel states, disrupting trade and aid. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — Geopolitical risk ▲ · Food inflation ▲ · Climate/crop supply ▲ — 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 | Volatility (VIX) VIXon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Vol | ▲ +7.5% hist +1.75–+5.31% · other way -4.53% (n=12) |
| 2 | Nasdaq 100 NDXon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Index | ▼ -2.7% hist -1.6–-0.33% · other way -0.47% (n=12) |
| 3 | Tech sector XLK 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -1.9% hist -0.98–+0.19% · other way -0.31% (n=12) |
| 4 | Semiconductors SMHon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -1.4% hist -0.95–-0.29% · other way +1.33% (n=12) |
| 5 | S&P 500 SPXon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Index | ▼ -1.5% hist -1.92–-0.08% · other way +1.73% (n=12) |
| 6 | Gold XAUon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Commodity | ▲ +0.8% hist -0.41–+0.62% · other way -0.07% (n=12) |
| 7 | MicroStrategy MSTRon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -1.0% hist -1.47–+2.69% · other way +33.18% (n=12) |
| 8 | Nvidia NVDAon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -1.0% hist -1.33–-0.03% · other way +2.5% (n=12) |
| 9 | Solana SOLon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Crypto | ▼ -0.7% hist -2.21–+4.5% · other way -2.41% (n=11) |
| 10 | AMD AMDon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -0.9% hist -1.41–+0.05% · other way -0.63% (n=12) |
| 11 | Broadcom AVGOon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -0.9% hist -1.47–+2.03% · other way -0.79% (n=12) |
| 12 | Micron MUon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -0.9% hist -2.01–+0.41% · other way -0.64% (n=12) |
| 13 | TSMC TSMon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -0.9% hist -3.03–+0.53% · other way +0.94% (n=12) |
| 14 | Marvell MRVLon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -0.9% hist -1.62–+2.0% · other way +2.8% (n=12) |
Probable recommendation
Why we may diverge from history
Trust the cascade's LONG RTX: the -1.1% history rests on ancient 1979-86 windows (Iran hostages, Chernobyl, Silver Thursday) — stale, tiny-magnitude, and irrelevant to a modern Sahel-unrest defense bid.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| RTX RTX | SHORT | -1.8% · 5d -1.3% | 68% | 40 | 0.32 | ⚠ differs |
| AMD AMD | SHORT | -0.9% · 5d -0.4% | 65% | 36 | 0.22 | ✓ matches cascade |
| INTC INTC | SHORT | -2.1% · 5d -2.4% | 63% | 36 | 0.22 | ✓ matches cascade |
| GBPUSD GBPUSD | SHORT | -0.6% · 5d -0.1% | 63% | 32 | 0.22 | ✓ matches cascade |
| XLK XLK | LONG | +0.8% · 5d -0.6% ↺ fades | 64% | 33 | 0.21 | ⚠ differs |
| SOL SOL | LONG | +4.6% · 5d -6.7% ↺ fades | 66% | 17 | 0.21 | ⚠ differs |
| TSM TSM | SHORT | -2.4% · 5d -2.4% | 64% | 33 | 0.21 | ✓ matches cascade |
| COIN COIN | LONG | +7.7% · 5d +1.8% | 61% | 15 | 0.19 | ⚠ differs |
| Volatility VIX | LONG | +1.4% · 5d +5.3% | 60% | 34 | 0.18 | ✓ matches cascade |
| 10y yield DGS10 | LONG | +10bp · 5d +6bp | 59% | 40 | 0.18 | · |
| Gold XAU | SHORT | -0.8% · 5d -0.8% | 59% | 33 | 0.15 | ⚠ differs |
| MSTR MSTR | LONG | +3.0% · 5d -2.0% ↺ fades | 60% | 33 | 0.14 | ⚠ differs |
| INR INR | SHORT | -0.8% · 5d +0.1% ↺ fades | 57% | 32 | 0.14 | ✓ matches cascade |
| TRY TRY | SHORT | -1.4% · 5d +0.8% ↺ fades | 57% | 32 | 0.13 | ✓ matches cascade |
Why this probability
Sahel food-price riots recur frequently amid coups/inflation; short window but elevated baseline unrest. A base‑rate‑anchored prior, continuously scored against what actually happens — not a forecast.