What if insurers pull tanker war-risk cover at a key port?
Underwriters pulling war-risk cover for a key load region strands cargoes physically — the cleanest channel is a Brent spike plus a VIX/risk-parity deleveraging cascade as a supply tail prices in. Rhymes with the 2019 Gulf-of-Oman tanker attacks and the 2022 post-invasion war-risk premium blowout, both of which spiked freight and crude. Forward angle: today's larger 'shadow fleet' self-insures outside Western P&I, so a Western cover-pull strands fewer barrels than in 2019 — the oil move may undershoot the model.
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 Imminent 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. Underwriters pull war-risk cover for a key load region, stranding cargoes and spiking shipping costs. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — Geopolitical risk ▲ · Oil supply risk ▲ — 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 | ▲ +9.1% hist +1.73–+6.95% · other way -9.61% (n=12) |
| 2 | Brent crude BRENTon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Commodity | ▲ +5.4% hist +1.93–+3.42% · other way +0.33% (n=12) |
| 3 | WTI crude CLon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Commodity | ▲ +4.5% hist -0.87–+2.67% · other way +4.42% (n=12) |
| 4 | Nasdaq 100 NDXon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Index | ▼ -4.4% hist -2.53–-0.83% · other way +0.27% (n=12) |
| 5 | Energy sector XLEon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▲ +3.1% hist +0.58–+3.08% · other way +0.21% (n=12) |
| 6 | Tech sector XLK 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -3.2% hist -1.93–-1.07% · other way +0.29% (n=12) |
| 7 | S&P 500 SPXon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Index | ▼ -2.2% hist -1.81–-0.62% · other way +0.66% (n=12) |
| 8 | United Airlines UAL 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -2.7% hist -3.11–+2.28% · other way +5.33% (n=12) |
| 9 | ExxonMobil XOM 📈 chart | Equity | ▲ +2.2% hist +0.12–+2.84% · other way -2.72% (n=12) |
| 10 | MicroStrategy MSTRon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -2.2% hist -2.46–+1.66% · other way +11.86% (n=12) |
| 11 | Chevron CVX 📈 chart | Equity | ▲ +2.0% hist +0.39–+1.72% · other way +0.18% (n=12) |
| 12 | Delta DAL 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -2.3% hist -1.97–+0.92% · other way +5.19% (n=12) |
| 13 | Semiconductors SMHon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -1.9% hist -1.46–-0.5% · other way -0.2% (n=12) |
| 14 | Solana SOLon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Crypto | ▼ -1.6% hist -4.19–+6.25% · other way -1.88% (n=11) |
Probable recommendation
Why we may diverge from history
Trust the cascade SHORT on COIN/HOOD/MSTR: their +16-22% history is BTC structural-bull beta from 2024-25 Israel-Iran windows, not a tanker war-risk insurance freeze; regime, not shock, drove the move.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CNY CNY | SHORT | -0.7% · 5d -0.1% | 71% | 31 | 0.41 | ✓ matches cascade |
| MRVL MRVL | SHORT | -2.4% · 5d -3.0% | 73% | 31 | 0.34 | ✓ matches cascade |
| NDX NDX | SHORT | -0.7% · 5d -0.8% | 72% | 38 | 0.33 | ✓ matches cascade |
| USDJPY USDJPY | LONG | +1.6% · 5d +0.2% | 69% | 33 | 0.33 | ✓ matches cascade |
| COIN COIN | LONG | +9.0% · 5d +2.2% | 69% | 15 | 0.31 | ⚠ differs |
| HOOD HOOD | LONG | +6.0% · 5d +0.4% | 69% | 15 | 0.30 | ⚠ differs |
| AMD AMD | SHORT | -2.2% · 5d -1.3% | 69% | 39 | 0.29 | ✓ matches cascade |
| NVDA NVDA | SHORT | -2.2% · 5d -4.6% | 66% | 32 | 0.26 | ✓ matches cascade |
| JPM JPM | LONG | +2.3% · 5d +0.0% | 64% | 39 | 0.24 | ⚠ differs |
| Volatility VIX | LONG | +2.5% · 5d +2.5% | 64% | 35 | 0.23 | ✓ matches cascade |
| TSM TSM | SHORT | -2.1% · 5d -3.2% | 64% | 33 | 0.22 | ✓ matches cascade |
| QCOM QCOM | SHORT | -2.1% · 5d -1.7% | 63% | 33 | 0.21 | ✓ matches cascade |
| INR INR | SHORT | -0.3% · 5d +0.1% ↺ fades | 63% | 28 | 0.20 | ✓ matches cascade |
| CL CL | SHORT | -2.4% · 5d -1.5% | 61% | 31 | 0.19 | ⚠ differs |
Why this probability
War-risk cover pulls are rare and region-specific; imminent timeline tightly constrains. A base‑rate‑anchored prior, continuously scored against what actually happens — not a forecast.