What if Texas puts secession to a ballot measure?
A Texas secession ballot is a reserve-confidence tail: union-fracture risk lifts long-end Treasury yields and gold while the dollar wobbles, even though actual secession is near-impossible. There is no clean US analogue; the nearest rhyme is foreign fragmentation premia (Brexit/Catalonia) or US debt-ceiling brinkmanship (2011 S&P downgrade lifted gold). The skeptical read: this stays a headline, not a price event — any spasm in 30y yields is a fade.
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 Tail risk 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. Texas legislature schedules independence referendum, dollar and Treasuries wobble on union-fracture tail risk. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — Dollar/reserve confidence ▼ · Geopolitical risk ▲ · 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 | Volatility (VIX) VIXon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Vol | ▲ +6.7% hist +0.08–+9.63% · other way +3.23% (n=12) |
| 2 | Nasdaq 100 NDXon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Index | ▼ -3.1% hist -1.75–-0.89% · other way -0.37% (n=12) |
| 3 | Gold XAUon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Commodity | ▲ +2.3% hist +0.2–+2.64% · other way -0.6% (n=12) |
| 4 | Tech sector XLK 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -2.1% hist -1.31–-0.32% · other way -0.34% (n=12) |
| 5 | S&P 500 SPXon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Index | ▼ -1.9% hist -1.22–-0.66% · other way +0.57% (n=12) |
| 6 | Semiconductors SMHon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -1.5% hist -0.96–+0.12% · other way +2.23% (n=12) |
| 7 | Nvidia NVDAon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -1.1% hist -0.78–-0.33% · other way +4.75% (n=12) |
| 8 | MicroStrategy MSTRon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▲ +0.8% hist -2.06–+8.03% · other way +26.92% (n=12) |
| 9 | AMD AMDon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -0.9% hist -2.11–+0.16% · other way -0.48% (n=12) |
| 10 | Broadcom AVGOon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -0.9% hist -1.5–+4.04% · other way +0.88% (n=12) |
| 11 | Micron MUon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -0.9% hist -5.19–+1.2% · other way +2.73% (n=12) |
| 12 | TSMC TSMon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -0.9% hist -1.86–+0.27% · other way +2.51% (n=12) |
| 13 | Marvell MRVLon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -0.9% hist -0.81–+0.14% · other way +1.61% (n=12) |
| 14 | High-yield credit HYG 📈 chart | Rate | ▼ -0.8% hist -0.95–-0.05% · other way -0.32% (n=12) |
Probable recommendation
Why we may diverge from history
Trust the cascade short on AVGO: its +3.5% history is swamped by AI-capex, and the up-prints come from 2025 tariff-war rebounds, not a US union-fracture tail that has no clean analogue.
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 | -0.5% · 5d -0.1% | 68% | 25 | 0.35 | ⚠ differs |
| COIN COIN | LONG | +13.2% · 5d +3.0% | 68% | 17 | 0.33 | ✓ matches cascade |
| ETH ETH | SHORT | -6.9% · 5d -5.9% | 71% | 20 | 0.31 | ✓ matches cascade |
| Volatility VIX | LONG | +5.9% · 5d +5.2% | 67% | 27 | 0.30 | ✓ matches cascade |
| AMD AMD | SHORT | -1.5% · 5d -0.8% | 68% | 31 | 0.28 | ✓ matches cascade |
| AVGO AVGO | LONG | +4.0% · 5d -0.6% ↺ fades | 64% | 24 | 0.27 | ⚠ differs |
| Bitcoin BTC | SHORT | -4.5% · 5d -3.9% | 65% | 23 | 0.23 | ⚠ differs |
| MSTR MSTR | LONG | +6.9% · 5d -1.4% ↺ fades | 63% | 25 | 0.22 | ✓ matches cascade |
| MU MU | SHORT | -4.3% · 5d -2.8% | 62% | 30 | 0.21 | ✓ matches cascade |
| TRY TRY | SHORT | -0.8% · 5d +1.2% ↺ fades | 64% | 24 | 0.19 | ⚠ differs |
| High-yield credit HYG | SHORT | -0.5% · 5d -0.3% | 61% | 24 | 0.18 | ✓ matches cascade |
| INR INR | SHORT | -0.3% · 5d +0.1% ↺ fades | 61% | 24 | 0.18 | ⚠ differs |
| Gold XAU | LONG | +1.4% · 5d -0.2% ↺ fades | 61% | 25 | 0.17 | ✓ matches cascade |
| NDX NDX | SHORT | -0.1% · 5d -0.9% | 60% | 30 | 0.15 | ✓ matches cascade |
Why this probability
Texas secession referendum essentially zero; legislature won't schedule; pure tail. A base‑rate‑anchored prior, continuously scored against what actually happens — not a forecast.