What if US rail-and-export logjam strands grain at the Gulf?
Rail-service breakdowns and Gulf-terminal congestion strand export grain, widening basis, lifting freight and slowing US shipments to world buyers.
24%
our model probability over 6–18 months
prediction markets — wisdom of the crowd
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◎ Empirically anchored 24%· 90% range 12–36%· 40 analogues · measured class energy 89% in 18 mo · 3% held back for the unknownhow we built this number — every step
Measured class rate — energy ≈1.4869/yr → 89% in 18 mo89%
Analyst prior · editorial share 28% of the class25%
Pooled · weight 87%24%
Crowd — no liquid market—
Reserve 3% · no extremizing (×1.0)24%
Published24%
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 6–18 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.
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What it would mean
If this plays out, it is a mixed shock. Rail-service breakdowns and Gulf-terminal congestion strand export grain, widening basis, lifting freight and slowing US shipments to world buyers. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — Corn ▲ · Climate/crop supply ▲ · Diesel ▲ · Food inflation ▲ — 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
CornCORNon Hyperliquid📈 chart
Commodity
▲ +0.3%
hist -0.22–+0.94% · other way +1.88% (n=9)
Probable recommendation
If the scenario above plays out, the probable cross‑asset positioning → a scenario‑conditional read, not personalized investment advice
For a common-man portfolio: Mixed for a typical portfolio — the move is more about rotation than direction. Favour the winners over the losers below rather than net exposure.
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.
H5N1 bird flu record US egg prices 2025-04↗Henry Hub natural gas falls to an all-time inflation-adjusted low on record output 2024-11↗Niger coup d'etat 2023-07↗PJM grid emergency during Winter Storm Elliott 2022-12↗European gas crisis intraday record spike 2021-10↗Texas grid failure during Winter Storm Uri 2021-02↗Norilsk Nickel Arctic diesel spill 2020-05↗WTI crude futures settle negative as demand collapses 2020-04↗IPBES warns ~1 million species face extinction 2019-05↗Oil collapses from $147 to the $30s as the GFC craters demand 2008-12↗Crude oil all-time high 2008-07↗Henry Hub natural gas spot price peaks during 2008 commodity boom 2008-07↗Platinum hits all-time record near $2,290 on South African power crisis 2008-03↗South Africa Eskom power emergency spikes platinum/PGMs 2008-01↗Amaranth Advisors natural-gas blowup 2006-09↗Northeast blackout cascading grid failure hits ~55 million 2003-08↗Argentina hyperinflation peak / Alfonsin early handover 1989-07↗Chernobyl disaster 1986-04↗Silver Thursday 1980-03↗Gold peaks at $850 1980-01↗Volcker Saturday Night Special 1979-10↗1979 Iranian Revolution oil shock 1979-01↗1974 sugar price spike to record 65+ cents 1974-11↗Nixon Shock 1971-08↗Iranian rial slides to a new record low 2025-12↗Gold tops $4,000 and silver spikes past $50 in historic squeeze 2025-10↗Fatal mud-rush halts Freeport's Grasberg, tightening copper supply 2025-09↗Trump's 50% copper tariff sends Comex copper to a record 2025-07↗Platinum hits an 11-year high on Chinese jewelry demand and deficit 2025-06↗Anglo American demerges Valterra Platinum 2025-06↗Iberian Peninsula total blackout 2025-04↗US egg prices hit record on persistent H5N1 2025-03↗Gold tops $3,000 for the first time amid tariff and rate-cut fears 2025-03↗USDA five-pronged plan to combat avian flu and egg prices 2025-02↗DRC suspends cobalt exports 2025-02↗DeepSeek shock crushes AI-power utilities Vistra and Constellation 2025-01↗Russian gas transit through Ukraine ends 2025-01↗Cocoa sets fresh all-time high above $12,000 2024-12↗Nasdaq Composite first close above 20000 2024-12↗Palladium jumps after US pushes G7 sanctions on Russian metal 2024-10↗