What if China quarantines Taiwan by inspecting every inbound ship?
A customs 'quarantine' of Taiwan-bound shipping chokes the world's leading-edge chip supply without a shot fired: TSMC and the semi sleeve gap down, VIX bids, and Nasdaq leads losses as fab single-point-of-failure risk reprices. Closest rhyme is the April 2025 100%+ tariff spiral that knocked semis and spiked gold; here the lever is logistics, not duties. Forward angle: a sub-kinetic blockade is harder for the US to answer militarily, so the equity drawdown could persist longer than a clean tariff headline.
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 risk-off shock. China declares law-enforcement quarantine inspecting all ships bound for Taiwan, stopping short of military blockade but choking trade. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — Geopolitical risk ▲ · Semiconductor supply risk ▲ · Trade tension ▲ — 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 | Volatility (VIX) VIXon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Vol | ▲ +12.9% hist +2.87–+11.05% · other way -1.95% (n=12) |
| 2 | Nasdaq 100 NDXon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Index | ▼ -7.3% hist -3.92–-1.89% · other way -0.12% (n=12) |
| 3 | Semiconductors SMHon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -5.6% hist -3.63–-1.77% · other way +0.99% (n=12) |
| 4 | TSMC TSMon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -5.4% hist -5.09–-0.88% · other way +1.17% (n=12) |
| 5 | Nvidia NVDAon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -5.2% hist -3.5–-1.01% · other way +3.31% (n=12) |
| 6 | Tech sector XLK 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -5.1% hist -3.19–-1.86% · other way +0.3% (n=12) |
| 7 | ASML ASMLon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -3.8% hist -4.67–-0.28% · other way -1.38% (n=12) |
| 8 | AMD AMDon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -3.8% hist -2.45–-1.3% · other way -2.76% (n=12) |
| 9 | Broadcom AVGOon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -3.8% hist -2.48–-1.1% · other way +5.2% (n=12) |
| 10 | Micron MUon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -3.8% hist -4.61–-0.26% · other way -2.25% (n=12) |
| 11 | Marvell MRVLon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -3.8% hist -2.82–-1.01% · other way -0.68% (n=12) |
| 12 | S&P 500 SPXon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Index | ▼ -2.9% hist -2.84–-0.53% · other way +1.39% (n=12) |
| 13 | Qualcomm QCOMon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -2.7% hist -4.02–+0.15% · other way -3.71% (n=12) |
| 14 | MicroStrategy MSTRon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -2.6% hist -2.6–+1.31% · other way +7.5% (n=12) |
Probable recommendation
Why we may diverge from history
Trust the cascade short on MSTR/AVGO: their +13%/+10% history is pure 2025-Q4 tariff-window clustering during a BTC structural bull — regime-contaminated; a Taiwan quarantine kinetic-trade shock won't replay that crypto melt-up.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ETH ETH | SHORT | -6.8% · 5d -6.4% | 73% | 23 | 0.36 | ✓ matches cascade |
| CNY CNY | SHORT | -0.6% · 5d -0.3% | 67% | 29 | 0.33 | ✓ matches cascade |
| KWEB KWEB | SHORT | -2.6% · 5d -1.4% | 67% | 27 | 0.27 | ✓ matches cascade |
| NVDA NVDA | SHORT | -1.1% · 5d -3.4% | 69% | 29 | 0.26 | ✓ matches cascade |
| TRY TRY | SHORT | -1.0% · 5d +0.6% ↺ fades | 66% | 28 | 0.25 | ✓ matches cascade |
| XCU XCU | SHORT | -0.7% · 5d -0.5% | 64% | 29 | 0.24 | ✓ matches cascade |
| CL CL | SHORT | -2.4% · 5d -2.1% | 64% | 29 | 0.24 | ✓ matches cascade |
| Bitcoin BTC | SHORT | -4.2% · 5d -3.8% | 65% | 27 | 0.23 | ✓ matches cascade |
| KRW KRW | LONG | +0.2% · 5d -0.3% ↺ fades | 63% | 28 | 0.22 | ⚠ differs |
| FCX FCX | SHORT | -3.9% · 5d -1.8% | 63% | 30 | 0.22 | ✓ matches cascade |
| NDX NDX | SHORT | -0.5% · 5d -1.2% | 64% | 35 | 0.21 | ✓ matches cascade |
| AUD AUD | SHORT | -0.7% · 5d -0.4% | 61% | 28 | 0.18 | ✓ matches cascade |
| BABA BABA | SHORT | -1.0% · 5d -2.7% | 60% | 27 | 0.17 | ✓ matches cascade |
| INTC INTC | SHORT | -2.4% · 5d -1.8% | 58% | 37 | 0.16 | ✓ matches cascade |
Why this probability
Quarantine-style coercion discussed but full customs blockade of Taiwan a major escalation, 6mo short. A base‑rate‑anchored prior, continuously scored against what actually happens — not a forecast.