What if Yangtze megadrought idles China hydropower & shipping?
A record Yangtze-basin drought slashes hydropower and halts river shipping, forcing factory curtailments in Sichuan and lifting thermal-coal demand and industrial disruption.
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 record Yangtze-basin drought slashes hydropower and halts river shipping, forcing factory curtailments in Sichuan and lifting thermal-coal demand and industrial disruption. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — China growth ▼ · Climate/crop supply ▲ · 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 | ▼ -0.6% hist -6.69–+1.42% · other way +7.78% (n=12) |
| 2 | Wheat WHEATon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Commodity | ▲ +0.5% hist -2.22–+0.9% · other way +1.41% (n=12) |
| 3 | Solana SOLon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Crypto | ▲ +0.4% hist -7.05–+3.03% · other way +20.37% (n=7) |
| 4 | Corn CORNon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Commodity | ▲ +0.4% hist -0.65–+0.64% · other way +3.65% (n=12) |
| 5 | Copper XCUon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Commodity | ▼ -0.4% hist -2.38–+0.37% · other way -0.13% (n=12) |
| 6 | Hyperliquid (HYPE) HYPEon Hyperliquid | Crypto | ▲ +0.3% model prior · unmeasured |
| 7 | Ether ETHon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Crypto | ▲ +0.3% hist -2.49–+1.01% · other way +6.19% (n=8) |
| 8 | MicroStrategy MSTRon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▲ +0.4% hist -1.13–+3.17% · other way +1.18% (n=12) |
| 9 | Nasdaq 100 NDXon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Index | ▲ +0.3% hist +0.01–+0.35% · other way +1.52% (n=12) |
| 10 | China internet KWEBon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -0.3% hist -4.51–+0.6% · other way +1.29% (n=8) |
| 11 | Alibaba BABAon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -0.2% hist -2.87–+0.84% · other way -3.04% (n=8) |
| 12 | Volatility (VIX) VIXon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Vol | ▼ -0.2% hist -0.52–+0.08% · other way -3.49% (n=12) |
| 13 | Bitcoin BTCon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Crypto | ▲ +0.2% hist -1.66–+0.85% · other way +8.18% (n=8) |
| 14 | Tech sector XLK 📈 chart | Equity | ▲ +0.2% hist -0.1–+0.52% · other way +1.59% (n=12) |
Probable recommendation
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| KWEB KWEB | SHORT | -3.6% · 5d -2.5% | 73% | 29 | 0.41 | ✓ matches cascade |
| XCU XCU | SHORT | -1.9% · 5d -1.1% | 69% | 36 | 0.34 | ✓ matches cascade |
| FCX FCX | SHORT | -5.6% · 5d -2.6% | 67% | 38 | 0.29 | ✓ matches cascade |
| SOL SOL | SHORT | -6.9% · 5d -15.3% | 66% | 17 | 0.23 | ⚠ differs |
| WHEAT WHEAT | SHORT | -2.2% · 5d -2.3% | 62% | 36 | 0.22 | ⚠ differs |
| High-yield credit HYG | SHORT | -0.5% · 5d +0.1% ↺ fades | 64% | 36 | 0.21 | · |
| BABA BABA | SHORT | -2.5% · 5d -3.0% | 61% | 28 | 0.19 | ✓ matches cascade |
| ETH ETH | SHORT | -2.4% · 5d -7.7% | 60% | 22 | 0.18 | ⚠ differs |
| Volatility VIX | SHORT | -0.4% · 5d -0.5% | 59% | 39 | 0.15 | ✓ matches cascade |
| XLK XLK | LONG | +0.4% · 5d -0.5% ↺ fades | 57% | 36 | 0.11 | ✓ matches cascade |
| US dollar DXY | LONG | +0.5% · 5d -0.1% ↺ fades | 56% | 40 | 0.11 | · |
| MSTR MSTR | LONG | +2.8% · 5d -4.1% ↺ fades | 55% | 36 | 0.09 | ✓ matches cascade |
| Bitcoin BTC | SHORT | -1.7% · 5d -3.6% | 54% | 28 | 0.07 | ⚠ differs |
| NDX NDX | LONG | +0.2% · 5d -0.8% ↺ fades | 51% | 40 | 0.02 | ✓ matches cascade |