What if Volkswagen closes its German factories?
VW closing German plants amid an EV slump plus IG Metall strikes is a German-industrial recession signal — short German autos/suppliers and DAX cyclicals; the cascade's China-up/copper-up tilt reflects Chinese share gains, not a German rescue. Rhymes with the 2024 VW domestic-closure threat and the ASML/auto demand shocks that hit European industrials. Transmission: lost German output cedes share to BYD and Chinese OEMs, so China-linked metals firm even as Europe weakens. Forward angle: the structural EV cost gap vs. China means this is secular share loss, so fade any 'cyclical-trough' bounce in German autos.
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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 (electric blue) over time vs the market's (Polymarket, amber), 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. Loading the probability audit trail…
What it would mean
If this plays out, it is a risk-off shock. Volkswagen shutters domestic factories amid EV slump, IG Metall strikes paralyze Lower Saxony output. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — China growth ▲ · Growth surprise ▼ · Recession signal ▲ — which propagate through our causal graph to the markets below.