What if a cyclone wrecks Australia's biggest manganese mine?
A cyclone destroying GEMCO's wharf removes ~10% of global high-grade manganese ore for a year — the direct move is manganese ore/alloy prices and steel-input costs higher, with the copper/Freeport leg a generic miner-beta stand-in. Rhymes with the March-2024 South32 GEMCO cyclone Megan damage that did exactly this and spiked manganese ore. Forward angle: high-grade Mn is concentrated (GEMCO, South Africa, Gabon), so a wharf outage tightens the premium-ore market disproportionately — the clean play is manganese-alloy/ferroalloy producers and Chinese steel-mill cost pressure, not copper.
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 mixed shock. A cyclone destroys the wharf at Australia's GEMCO, removing a tenth of global high-grade manganese ore for a year. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — Industrial demand ▲ · 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 | Freeport (copper) FCX 📈 chart | Equity | ▲ +0.6% hist -0.11–+0.97% · other way +4.9% (n=12) |
| 2 | Wheat WHEATon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Commodity | ▲ +0.4% hist -0.04–+0.57% · other way -1.11% (n=12) |
| 3 | Corn CORNon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Commodity | ▲ +0.3% hist -0.08–+0.61% · other way +2.22% (n=12) |
| 4 | Copper XCUon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Commodity | ▲ +0.2% hist -0.18–+0.69% · other way -0.49% (n=12) |
| 5 | Platinum XPTon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Commodity | ▲ +0.1% hist -0.36–+0.24% · other way +1.16% (n=12) |
| 6 | Palladium XPDon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Commodity | ▲ +0.1% hist -0.54–+0.35% · other way -1.46% (n=12) |
Probable recommendation
Why we may diverge from history
Trust the cascade's WHEAT long: the -2.3% base rate is assembled from off-channel egg-flu and bullion-squeeze windows — a coincidental, irrelevant sample for an Australian manganese cyclone.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US dollar DXY | LONG | +0.1% · 5d +0.2% | 57% | 40 | 0.12 | · |
| XPT XPT | SHORT | -0.4% · 5d -1.0% | 55% | 39 | 0.09 | ⚠ differs |
| Gold XAU | LONG | +0.3% · 5d -0.9% ↺ fades | 55% | 39 | 0.09 | · |
| CORN CORN | LONG | +0.4% · 5d -0.6% ↺ fades | 53% | 39 | 0.05 | ✓ matches cascade |
| XPD XPD | SHORT | -0.6% · 5d -0.5% | 53% | 39 | 0.04 | ⚠ differs |
| FCX FCX | LONG | +0.6% · 5d -0.9% ↺ fades | 45% | 39 | 0.00 | ✓ matches cascade |
| WHEAT WHEAT | LONG | +0.3% · 5d +0.1% | 42% | 39 | 0.00 | ✓ matches cascade |
| XCU XCU | LONG | +0.5% · 5d -0.6% ↺ fades | 45% | 39 | 0.00 | ✓ matches cascade |
| Volatility VIX | SHORT | -1.4% · 5d +0.3% ↺ fades | 50% | 39 | 0.00 | · |
| Bitcoin BTC | LONG | +3.0% · 5d -0.9% ↺ fades | 50% | 39 | 0.00 | · |
| High-yield credit HYG | SHORT | -0.2% · 5d +0.0% ↺ fades | 50% | 39 | 0.00 | · |
| 10y yield DGS10 | LONG | +5bp · 5d +2bp | 48% | 40 | 0.00 | · |
Why this probability
Cyclones hit northern Australia yearly, but a wharf-destroying GEMCO year-long outage is uncommon. A base‑rate‑anchored prior, continuously scored against what actually happens — not a forecast.