Geopolitics risk-off · 6–18 months
A what‑if from the future

What if drought at Panama and disruption at Suez hit at once?

Simultaneous Panama-drought and Suez disruption spike freight rates and lengthen routes, pushing a war/supply premium into Brent (more Gulf-exposed than WTI) while goods-cost pass-through nudges breakevens and pressures tariff-sensitive tech. Rhymes with the 2023-24 Red Sea/Houthi rerouting and 2021 Suez Ever Given blockage, both of which spiked container rates and crude briefly. Forward angle: this is a curve/breakeven trade — long energy and real yields — more than an equity short, since freight inflation is transitory once routing normalizes.

19%
our model probability
over 6–18 months
prediction markets — the market's odds
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Anchored to measured history 19% · 90% range 8–31% · 40 dated precedents behind it — a wider range means thinner evidence

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…

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What it would mean

If this plays out, it is a risk-off shock. A Panama-Canal drought plus Suez disruption spikes global freight rates. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — Oil supply risk ▲ · Trade tension ▲ · Inflation expectations ▲ — which propagate through our causal graph to the markets below.

Methodology. Probability and impact are anchored to history and scored against what actually happens — wins and losses, in public, at Reality Check. Market odds live from Polymarket & Kalshi. By Vikas Singh, Quantitative Strategist. Updated 2026-08-13.