Ceasefire Odds
Looking at the graphs of markets on ceasefires on the Russian invasion of Ukraine is not an optimistic exercise. Hope for peace abounds at the start of the year, and as attempts to broker ceasefires fail one after the other, the market trends towards zero. This has played out similarly over the last three years:
In this year’s iteration, there has been some noise since the start of August, as summits with Putin in Alaska, followed by Zelenskyy and other European leaders at the White House, were announced and held. Odds of a ceasefire have nearly doubled in the last week but still remain slightly below odds on real-money platforms.
In Alaska, expectations on Manifold were quite low. Markets mostly asked about topcis like whether Trump would make territorial concessions of part of Alaska, whether Russia might one day invade if it turns its eyes on another former territory with deep historical connections, or whether Trump or Putin would commit a terrible gaffe. Others speculated (not for the first time) whether a bridge between the two nations might be planned. This is a moonshot that has been proposed a number of times by American (including the Bush family), Chinese, and Russian stakeholders, variously.
Meanwhile, at the summit at the White House, forecasters deliberated on Zelenskyy’s attire. Many believed that the White House had issued a requirement that Zelenskyy wear a suit (though this was not officially confirmed), and the Ukrainian president showed up in a “French-style army jacket.” Despite likely disagreement from the Twitter Menswear Guy, Manifold agreed this constituted a suit, as did press pool reporters.
If anything was accomplished between the summits, it appears to be primarily good vibes and optics, although expert observers highlighted one column of agreement. Putin seemed to willingly concede that security guarantees for Ukraine would be a part of a deal, and at the crisis meeting at the White House, such guarantees were (kind of) assured by the US and Europe.
A key reason to be skeptical of any progress at these summits is that they happened separately. I don’t think most are confident in the Trump administration’s ability to act as a faithful intermediary, given that often, they appear more interested in negotiating independent deals with both sides on minerals, tariff policies, and other economic flashpoints. However, in light of the summit outcomes, and with Zelenskyy expressing a willingness to meet with Putin, the odds of official bilateral peace talks have risen.
So have the odds that the US will host such a summit this year:
However, it’s possible the motivation for Trump hosting such a summit might be less altruistic, and more with a particular goal in mind…
Oslo
The Oracle has already done a deep dive into Trump’s odds on taking home a Nobel Prize this year. On Polymarket, the odds are roughly double that on Manifold. Trump has made no secret of the fact that he desires the prize. Of course, Trump is not popular in Norway, not popular among the cohort of individuals who select prizes of great import, and not popular among people who like to think deeply about global peace, which might put a damper on his odds. Running in his favor, however, would be the enormity of a potential brokered ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine, and the precedent for the committee going out of its way to encourage peacemaking in the American presidency (see: Obama, Carter, Roosevelt, Wilson).
User Evan Daniel’s market on whether Trump will win a Nobel Prize if and only if there’s a ceasefire, which also resolves YES if neither event occurs, is an interesting way of establishing a correlation between the events:
From this market, as well as the independent markets on ceasefire odds and Trump’s Nobel odds, Evan extracted the implied probabilities of each situation, which counter-intuitively seems to indicate that a ceasefire would lower Trump’s odds of winning the prize. I think this most likely indicates the limitations of Manifold bettors’ arbitrage capabilities, and calibration around low-probability events, but perhaps there’s something to it. A ceasefire might open the opportunity for awarding a prize to European, Ukrainian, or Russian figures who were more closely involved in the process.
Outlook
Manifold has long been tracking the conflict and what such a peace deal would even entail. The conflict has ground down into a protracted, slow affair, as Russian forces make incremental progress along the front, and European support for Ukraine remains strong. Odds of a significant breakthrough in territory by the end of the year remain low (lower indeed than a ceasefire). This market is operationalized, for example, by whether Russia will take two of the following cities: Mikolaiv, Zaporizhzhia, Kharkiv, Odesa, Lozova, Sumy, and Chernihiv.
Instead, it seems that pressure will build over the next couple years for an eventual outcome through freezing the conflict, though the degree of concessions each side will have to make will likely depend on the situation on the ground and the trajectory of the war. Despite the equivocations of US leadership, continued pressure on Russia seems likely. I saw a statistic floating around that European purchases of Russian fossil fuels exceeded their military aid to Ukraine, so there’s still a lot of ground left to inflict further economic pressure on their end, if the war escalates further and Europe has the ability to stomach the necessary energy austerity measures (which they may not, given the recent discourse on air conditioning).
Despite the near-term uncertainty, Manifold traders seem in agreement about the long term result of the conflict, at least in broad strokes: Russia will have carved out an additional chunk of Ukraine, the conflict will be frozen, and both nations will still exist.
Hopefully Russia’s hunger for invading former USSR states has been dampened, but Manifold isn’t too sure:
Steppe Nomads
Despite the continued intensity of the conflict—and despite Ukraine’s deployment of the “NOMAD Unit,” made up of foreign volunteer soldiers from indigenous populations in Russia—Manifold traders view it as very unlikely that steppe nomads will wipe out humanity by the end of next year.
Happy Forecasting!
-Above the Fold