What if the SNB sells reserves to weaken a soaring franc?
The SNB dumping euros and dollars to cap franc strength is a tell that a safe-haven panic is already underway: the driver is the risk-off, so VIX spikes and high-beta equities/crypto are sold while risk-parity delevers. Rhymes with the franc-strength episodes around the 2011 eurozone crisis (pre-floor) and the August 2024 vol shock. Forward: SNB selling slows CHF's ascent but can't reverse a genuine flight-to-quality, so fade franc-weakness on intervention headlines.
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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. The SNB dumps euros and dollars to cap unwanted franc strength during a safe-haven panic, reigniting currency-manipulator accusations. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — Geopolitical risk ▲ · Risk appetite ▼ — which propagate through our causal graph to the markets below.