What if cooling inflation and steady growth confirm a soft landing?
A soft core-PCE print with steady growth validates the soft landing; the highest-beta expression is crypto (SOL/ETH) and Nasdaq leading as credit spreads and VIX compress. Rhymes with the late-2023 'immaculate disinflation' melt-up that drove a furious everything-rally into year-end. Forward angle: with risk already richly priced and cuts partly in, the marginal soft-landing surprise has a smaller multiple-expansion runway than 2023 — chase beta, but tighten stops.
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 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. 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-on shock. Core PCE surprises sharply lower with steady growth, validating a soft landing. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — Growth surprise ▲ · Fed policy path ▼ · Risk appetite ▲ — 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 | Solana SOLon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Crypto | ▲ +1.1% hist -4.17–+9.7% · other way +19.62% (n=5) |
| 2 | MicroStrategy MSTRon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▲ +1.0% hist -5.84–+14.32% · other way -6.44% (n=9) |
| 3 | Hyperliquid (HYPE) HYPEon Hyperliquid | Crypto | ▲ +0.8% model prior · unmeasured |
| 4 | Nasdaq 100 NDXon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Index | ▲ +0.7% hist -0.03–+1.02% · other way +0.84% (n=10) |
| 5 | Ether ETHon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Crypto | ▲ +0.7% hist -0.34–+1.71% · other way +1.26% (n=5) |
| 6 | Tech sector XLK 📈 chart | Equity | ▲ +0.6% hist -0.23–+1.27% · other way +0.64% (n=9) |
| 7 | Bitcoin BTCon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Crypto | ▲ +0.5% hist -0.26–+1.18% · other way -7.27% (n=7) |
| 8 | Volatility (VIX) VIXon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Vol | ▼ -0.5% hist -1.35–+2.33% · other way +1.09% (n=10) |
| 9 | S&P 500 SPXon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Index | ▲ +0.4% hist -0.28–+1.79% · other way -3.34% (n=12) |
| 10 | Coinbase COINon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▲ +0.4% hist -3.82–+8.07% · other way +16.88% (n=4) |
| 11 | Semiconductors SMHon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▲ +0.3% hist -0.44–+1.89% · other way +0.38% (n=9) |
| 12 | High-yield credit HYG 📈 chart | Rate | ▲ +0.3% hist -0.24–+0.19% · other way +0.07% (n=8) |
| 13 | Financials XLF 📈 chart | Equity | ▲ +0.2% hist -0.18–+0.25% · other way -0.7% (n=9) |
| 14 | JPMorgan JPM 📈 chart | Equity | ▲ +0.2% hist -0.31–+1.27% · other way -1.5% (n=11) |
Probable recommendation
Why we may diverge from history
Trust the cascade long on AVGO: the -2.8% leans on a 2013 BOJ-QQE and 2025 RBI/palladium windows off-channel to a US soft-landing — thin, scattered sample versus AI-capex demand tailwind.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SPX SPX | LONG | +1.4% · 5d +0.9% | 67% | 40 | 0.32 | ✓ matches cascade |
| TSM TSM | LONG | +3.0% · 5d -0.9% ↺ fades | 64% | 40 | 0.26 | ✓ matches cascade |
| SMH SMH | LONG | +1.6% · 5d -0.2% ↺ fades | 62% | 40 | 0.22 | ✓ matches cascade |
| JPM JPM | LONG | +1.1% · 5d -0.2% ↺ fades | 62% | 40 | 0.21 | ✓ matches cascade |
| High-yield credit HYG | SHORT | -0.3% · 5d +0.0% ↺ fades | 63% | 39 | 0.19 | ⚠ differs |
| 10y yield DGS10 | LONG | +7bp · 5d +0bp | 62% | 40 | 0.19 | · |
| MRVL MRVL | LONG | +4.7% · 5d -1.6% ↺ fades | 58% | 40 | 0.14 | ✓ matches cascade |
| MU MU | LONG | +2.0% · 5d -1.2% ↺ fades | 58% | 40 | 0.13 | ✓ matches cascade |
| Gold XAU | SHORT | -0.5% · 5d -0.5% | 58% | 40 | 0.13 | · |
| MSTR MSTR | LONG | +13.3% · 5d -2.0% ↺ fades | 53% | 40 | 0.07 | ✓ matches cascade |
| ETH ETH | LONG | +1.2% · 5d -3.5% ↺ fades | 54% | 38 | 0.06 | ✓ matches cascade |
| Volatility VIX | LONG | +2.5% · 5d -2.8% ↺ fades | 53% | 40 | 0.05 | ⚠ differs |
| NDX NDX | LONG | +0.6% · 5d -0.7% ↺ fades | 51% | 40 | 0.02 | ✓ matches cascade |
| XLF XLF | SHORT | -0.3% · 5d -0.6% | 51% | 40 | 0.02 | ⚠ differs |
Why this probability
Soft-landing increasingly the consensus path; 18mo window with steady growth supports it. A base‑rate‑anchored prior, continuously scored against what actually happens — not a forecast.