What if a new outbreak locks down Shanghai's ports?
A Shanghai-Ningbo COVID-style lockdown is a China demand-destruction shock first: WTI -1.3% on mobility collapse and copper softer, with safe-haven gold bid on stimulus expectations - the rare risk-off here that sells oil rather than buying it. Rhymes directly with the H1-2022 Shanghai lockdown that crushed crude demand and rebuilt the container backlog. China is the demand sink; trade partners feel it via re-spiked freight. The forward angle is post-zero-COVID Beijing is loath to re-lock, so probability is low but the supply-chain replay is the right mechanism.
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 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. Loading the probability audit trail…
What it would mean
If this plays out, it is a risk-off shock. A new outbreak triggers a Shanghai-Ningbo port lockdown, rebuilding the 2022 container backlog and freight spike. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — China growth ▼ · Inflation surprise ▲ · Pandemic shock ▲ — which propagate through our causal graph to the markets below.