Scenarios
Pick a shock. Move the sliders. Get the answer.
Every story opens with the plain-English outcome — your groceries, your fuel, your costs. The modeling sits underneath, on tap.
- SugarWhat if India extends its sugar export curbs?India is a top-five sugar exporter. Explore what extended curbs would expose.Play the what-if →LiveHeating up
- Coffee · Sugar · SoybeansWhat if Brazil's harvests falter?Brazil tops world exports of coffee, sugar, and soybeans. Explore what a bad season would expose.Play the what-if →LiveHeating up
- CoffeeWhat if Brazil's coffee regions bake again?Brazil is a third of world coffee exports. Explore what another 2024-style drought would expose.Play the what-if →LiveWorth watching
- Wheat · CornWhat if Black Sea grain stops?Russia and Ukraine together are a quarter of world wheat exports. Explore the exposure.Play the what-if →LiveWorth watching
- Palm oilWhat if this El Niño is the strongest since 1950?An El Niño is underway right now: NOAA's Climate Prediction Center issued an El Niño Advisory on September 10, 2026, with a greater than 90% chance of a very strong event through fall and winter 2026–27. This scenario models the forecast's upper tail — the difference between very strong (≥2.0°C) and historic (≥2.5°C, stronger than any El Niño since 1950).Play the what-if →Live
- Soybeans · CornWhat if a severe La Niña hits South American crops?La Niña's crop damage concentrates in Argentina and southern Brazil — corn and soy. Model a severe event. Note: a strong El Niño is underway right now, so this is the counterfactual.Play the what-if →LiveWorth watching
- WheatWhat if Suez closes to wheat?On the measured lane, 97% of Black Sea/EU wheat to Asia transits Suez. Model the delay.Play the what-if →LiveWorth watching
- CornWhat if a 2012-style drought hits the US corn belt?The US is the top corn exporter. Explore what another 2012 would expose.Play the what-if →LiveWorth watching
- CornWhat if Europe's heatwave comes back worse?Maize, the Rhine, and French nuclear power. Model a severe European heatwave — not a wheat shock: 2022's drought helped the wheat harvest.Play the what-if →LiveWorth watching
- CopperWhat if a great earthquake hits Chile's copper belt?Chile and Peru mine about a third of the world's copper. Past quakes stopped mines for hours or days — but structural damage has no modern analog. Model the harder case explicitly.Play the what-if →LiveWorth watching
- container-shippingWhat if traffic through the Strait of Malacca is disrupted?Malacca carries 21% of global maritime trade by value (CSIS 2026, $2.46T). This models a disruption on the Ever Given template — throttling and delays, not a full closure, for which no measured analog exists.Play the what-if →Not live
- refiningWhat if a Category 5 hurricane hits Houston?The Gulf Coast holds about 54% of US refining capacity. Harvey shut 16.6% of it — but the gasoline shock only bites at Cat 3+. Model the storm yourself.Play the what-if →Not live
- autosWhat if a great earthquake and tsunami hit Japan?Japan builds about 8.9% of the world's motor vehicles — and 2011's M9.0 shaved nearly half a point off US GDP through supply chains alone. Sole-source suppliers, not assembly plants, were the binding constraint. Model the shock yourself.Play the what-if →Not live
- semiconductorsWhat if a major earthquake hits Taiwan?Taiwan holds nearly 80% of EUV-generation foundry capacity and about 46% of total global foundry capacity — TSMC alone is 72% of foundry revenue. Three measured quakes (1999, 2016, 2024) show the range from overnight recovery to a 5× DRAM spike. Model the shock yourself.Play the what-if →Not live
- container-shippingWhat if the Taiwan Strait escalates — short of a blockade?A full blockade has no measured analog, so it is out of scope here. This models an escalation short of blockade on the 2022 exercise template: drill-zone disruptions, reroutes east of Taiwan, and insurance repricing.Play the what-if →Not live
- containersWhat if a US port strike shuts the East and Gulf Coast ports?The 36 ILA ports handle about 55% of US container imports by volume. Three days was absorbed in 2024; 2002's 10-day lockout took months to clear. Model a longer one.Play the what-if →Not live
- RiceWhat if India shuts rice exports again?India is the top rice exporter. Explore what another export curb would expose.Play the what-if →Not live
- SoybeansWhat if low water chokes the Panama Canal again?About a quarter of US soybean exports transit the Panama Canal. Model the delay.Play the what-if →Not live
- Crude oilWhat if Hormuz stays choked through winter?The strait has effectively collapsed since the Feb 28, 2026 strikes on Iran: EIA put 2Q26 transits at 4.9 mb/d against a 21.6 mb/d 4Q25 baseline, and Kpler's strongest August week showed 4.26 mb/d of crude leaving. Transits run at 3–7 vessels a day, and the main Saudi bypass pipeline was shut by drone attack in September. This guide models how long the choke persists through winter, whether the remaining ~4–5 mb/d of crude flows erode further, and how much stockpile cover buffers the gap — while flagging the widely disputed flow figures.Play the what-if →Not live
- Crude oilWhat if energy infrastructure gets hit next?The US-Iran war is underway since February 28, 2026; Hormuz tanker traffic has slowed to a trickle, and a mid-September 2026 drone attack shut Saudi Arabia's East-West Pipeline, which had been moving 4-5 million barrels a day. This scenario models NEW physical damage to Gulf energy infrastructure beyond what has already happened — to processing plants, export terminals, or pipelines on either side of the Gulf. Tension, threats, or shipping rerouting alone do not count: the dial only counts operator- or EIA-confirmed physical capacity destroyed.Play the what-if →Not live
- CocoaWhat if West Africa's cocoa belt dries out?Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana anchor the West African cocoa belt. Explore what another dry stretch would expose.Play the what-if →Not live
Illustrative scenarios. Not predictions. Not financial advice. “Live” means the scenario's commodities are moving right now — the scenario itself is still a what-if.