What if US critical-minerals stockpiling tightens copper and PGMs?
A US strategic stockpiling program for copper and platinum-group metals adds steady official demand, tightening already thin markets and supporting prices.
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 1–3 years 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 US strategic stockpiling program for copper and platinum-group metals adds steady official demand, tightening already thin markets and supporting prices. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — Copper ▲ · Defense spending ▲ · Industrial demand ▲ · 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 | Freeport (copper) FCX 📈 chart | Equity | ▲ +0.7% hist -0.29–+0.56% · other way +1.38% (n=12) |
| 2 | Copper XCUon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Commodity | ▲ +0.6% hist -0.45–+0.58% · other way -3.97% (n=12) |
| 3 | Lockheed LMT 📈 chart | Equity | ▲ +0.4% hist +0.05–+0.4% · other way +1.41% (n=12) |
| 4 | Northrop NOC 📈 chart | Equity | ▲ +0.3% hist -2.05–+0.4% · other way +2.56% (n=12) |
| 5 | RTX RTXon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▲ +0.3% hist -0.87–+0.5% · other way +0.53% (n=12) |
Probable recommendation
Historical precedent — what analogous events actually did
Across 34 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10y yield DGS10 | LONG | +22bp · 5d +11bp | 72% | 33 | 0.42 | · |
| NOC NOC | SHORT | -1.8% · 5d -0.8% | 73% | 29 | 0.39 | ⚠ differs |
| US dollar DXY | LONG | +0.1% · 5d +0.1% | 69% | 33 | 0.31 | · |
| High-yield credit HYG | SHORT | -0.8% · 5d -0.3% | 71% | 21 | 0.31 | · |
| Bitcoin BTC | LONG | +1.5% · 5d -2.5% ↺ fades | 63% | 19 | 0.20 | · |
| Volatility VIX | LONG | +4.7% · 5d -0.9% ↺ fades | 59% | 29 | 0.15 | · |
| RTX RTX | SHORT | -1.0% · 5d -1.3% | 57% | 33 | 0.13 | ⚠ differs |
| Gold XAU | SHORT | -0.2% · 5d -1.2% | 57% | 23 | 0.11 | · |
| FCX FCX | SHORT | -0.6% · 5d -2.6% | 54% | 26 | 0.06 | ⚠ differs |
| XCU XCU | SHORT | -0.7% · 5d -1.4% | 52% | 23 | 0.04 | ⚠ differs |
| LMT LMT | LONG | +0.2% · 5d -0.5% ↺ fades | 42% | 33 | 0.00 | ✓ matches cascade |