The 7-day moving average of transit calls for the Bab el-Mandeb Strait drops to 10 or fewer by October 31, 2026.
Regional conflict threatens maritime shipping near the Red Sea. Resolves if IMF PortWatch reports 10 or fewer daily transit calls on a 7-day average.
Across 6 frontier models answering independently, the panel has all but ruled it out: the median is 7%.
They broadly agree, 14 points between GPT at 18% and DeepSeek at 4%.
Traders risking real money on Polymarket land in the same place, at 6%.
Nothing is settled until 1 Nov 2026, when the outcome is checked against sources and every number above gets a permanent score.
- AI edge
- +1 pts
- Moved this week
- -2 pts
- Volume
- $1.1M
The panel and the market agree almost exactly — 7% against 6%.
What each one said
-
GPTOpenAI
A sustained closure or sharp security escalation must suppress an already-diverted but still functioning Red Sea route within 25 days.
- PortWatch needs to print one seven-day average at or below 10 before October 31, leaving little time for traffic to collapse.
- Past Houthi-era disruption cut Suez/Red Sea traffic sharply, but Bab el-Mandeb calls generally retained a residual flow above near-total shutdown levels.
- I would raise this sharply on verified blockade, mining, or broad insurer withdrawal that halts remaining commercial and naval-linked transits.
18% -
GeminiGoogle
Hitting 10 transits requires a near-total blockade halting even Chinese, Russian, and local regional cabotage traffic.
- Even during peak 2024 Houthi anti-ship missile barrages, 7-day average daily transits held above 20 due to non-Western traffic.
- Reaching 10 calls requires extensive sea mining, Iranian direct blockade, or severe physical chokehold closing all commercial passage.
- A major regional war shutting Persian Gulf and Red Sea tanker routes entirely before November 2026 is the main upside risk.
14% -
GrokxAI
Whether remaining Red Sea traffic collapses to near-zero in the next 25 days.
- IMF PortWatch 7-day MA has stayed well above 10 even at 2024 Houthi-attack troughs (Suez volume halved, not emptied).
- A drop to ≤10 requires almost all remaining ~20-40 daily calls to vanish immediately; no such halt is scheduled or underway.
- Only a sudden full blockade or Suez closure would flip this; none is signaled as of 6 Oct.
7% -
QwenAlibaba
Houthi ceasefire and partial resumption of Red Sea traffic makes a drop to ≤10 transits/day extremely unlikely by end of October 2026.
- By late 2025, Houthi attacks had largely ceased following the January 2025 ceasefire, and major carriers (Maersk, CMA CGM) began partial Red Sea route resumption in…
- IMF PortWatch data through early 2026 shows Bab el-Mandeb transits recovering toward 30-50+ daily calls, well above the ≤10 threshold.
- A drop to ≤10 would require a sudden catastrophic escalation (e.g., renewed large-scale Houthi attacks or new state-level conflict) within 25 days, which has no current…
7% -
ClaudeAnthropic
Needs traffic to collapse to near-zero levels in under a month, far below current reduced-but-still-active transit volumes.
- Houthi attacks cut traffic sharply in 2024-2025 but transit calls have stayed well above 10/day on 7-day average per PortWatch historical patterns.
- Reaching ≤10 would require an extreme escalation or near-total shipping halt, not just continued risk avoidance, within less than one month.
- No current signal of imminent total closure; absent a major new attack wave or blockade, baseline traffic levels make this resolution unlikely.
5% -
DeepSeekDeepSeek
Only a full Red Sea shipping collapse gets Bab el-Mandeb transits to 10/day; current levels are far higher.
- Bab el-Mandeb normally sees 50-70 daily transits; even during the 2024 Houthi crisis the 7-day average bottomed near 30-40, not 10.
- Reaching 10 requires near-total avoidance by container, tanker, and bulk operators, which would take weeks of escalating attacks and insurer withdrawal to materialize.
- With only ~3.5 weeks left, the most likely path is continued gradual decline or partial recovery, not a collapse to single digits.
4%
6 of 6 models answered · 14 points between the highest and lowest. None was shown the market price.
Resolution criteria
This market will resolve to “Yes” if IMF PortWatch publishes a 7-day moving average of transit calls (“Arrivals of Ships”) for the Bab el-Mandeb Strait less than or equal to 10 for any date between market creation and the listed date. Otherwise, this market will resolve to “No”. This market will resolve as soon as IMF PortWatch publishes a 7-day moving average of transit calls for the Bab el-Mandeb Strait equal to or below 10, or once data has been published for the listed date and no such value has been published. If no data has been published for the listed date within 14 calendar days (ET) after that date, this market will resolve based on the data published up to that point. Revisions to previously published data points made before data has been published for the listed date will be considered; however, they will not disqualify a previously published data point from qualifying. Revisions made after data has been published for the listed date will not be considered. The resolution source for this market will be IMF PortWatch, specifically the “Arrivals of Ships” data published for the Bab el-Mandeb Strait at https://portwatch.imf.org/pages/6b1814d64903461b98144a6cc25eb79c.
Question sourced from Polymarket on 6 Oct 2026. Forecast by google/gemini-3.8-flash, anthropic/claude-sonnet-5, openai/gpt-5.6-terra, x-ai/grok-4.6, deepseek/deepseek-v4.1-flash, qwen/qwen3.8-max-0902 via OpenRouter.