@WalterMartin Time to decide if Ambiguous means 50/50 or N/A!

@Panfilo thanks for the heads up! @traders , the strong signal has been that folks have been trading with the expectation of an N/A in the absence of a clear yes/no from Metaculus, so that's what I'll go with. I'm sorry for those of you who, like me, would have done well with a 50/50!

@WalterMartin Noooooooooooooooo

(this is totally fair and reasonable but still costs me tens of thousands of mana)

@Sketchy 😭😭😭 sorry for your (our) losses 😢

@WalterMartin Great finality, thanks, I know the russian spammers will show up soon and criticize your resoltion but it was correct in my opinion

@WalterMartin if it resolved N/A, then nobody lost anything

@JeromeHPowell while that is true, it may still feel like losses 🙃

@JeromeHPowell yes but some people had thousands of mana of profit locked in from trading on previous swings that disappears when N/A 😭

@WalterMartin totally reasonable but rip any profits, I would have benefited more from a NO resolution than NA😭

@Mochi same lol

@Panfilo The market still served its primary purpose; helping me stay in Masters from Dec to Jan.

@Mochi totally reasonable but rip any profits, I would have benefited more from a YES resolution than NA😭

@ChadCotty another order up at 45 if u want

Whatever Metaculus says, Maersk itself says YES

https://www.maersk.com/news/articles/2025/12/22/developments-in-red-sea-first-trans-suez-sailing

@ChrisMillsc5f7 Already been factored into the question as it’s a weeks old release, related comment from an admin:

”I'm arguing for the sake of arguing now, there's clearly enough disagreement here to push the question towards resolving as Ambiguous if nothing happens in the next week.

I think I agree with you with the method/framework interpretation. But my read is that this framework is a flow-chart like thingy:

• Send one ship in the Red Sea as a test

• If it is attacked, stop, reconsider in some months

  • If it is not attacked, send a ~few more to test more extensively

  • If any is attacked, stop, reconsider in some months

    • If none are attacked, partially resume traffic (as in X% of diverted traffic will now return)

    • If issues, stop

      • If not, fully resume traffic

I don't count tests as partial resumption, nor a change in policy. Some additional arguments:

• If Maersk's plan in 2024 was "when it seems that the hostilities have stopped, [execute the above flow chart]", what would we even consider a policy change? By your approach, the plan would already be in motion, they would just be in the check_status_of_hostilities phase and this question would never resolve.

• What if this one ship had been attacked and Maersk said "well, see you in a few months"? In my interpretation, this is fine. They did a test, it wasn't successful, nothing has changed yet. In your interpretation, Maersk changed policies twice in a matter of days.

• Again, I think the most direct test of this would be to imagine a hypothetical client asking Maersk what their policy is regarding routing some ships through the Red Sea. I very much imagine they would say "we don't do that yet, but we might in the near future". I.e., "we haven't change our policy yet, but we're approaching that stage".

Also, the language of the fine print point is

Reports of Maersk ships traveling the Red Sea will also resolve the question as Yes if, in the judgment of Metaculus, the event represents a change to official Maersk policy, allowing its ships to travel through the Red Sea.

Are Maersk ships allowed to travel through the Red Sea right now? Since the answer is a no, I don't see where the argument for a Yes resolution comes from”

@Jessef0226 sending a ship isnt resuming shipping. Jeesh....but I appreciate your attention to detail :)

50 percenters will be surprised with the very predictable resolution, based on fine print..

🤣

@traders , with this last-minute excitement, the Metaculus resolution still seems in doubt. Given that, I'm going to extend the closing time of this market so that we can all continue to enjoy the chaos until there is an actual resolution from Metaculus. I will no longer bet on this market myself since there may be a judgment call about how to resolve if the Metaculus resolution is not yes/no (though I do reserve the right to make a final cleanup bet before resolution as long as the market is already close to the yes/no/50-50 point). And finally, remember that this question may still be N/Aed if Metaculus annuls the question.

@WalterMartin “last minute excitement” is news that’s already been out for weeks

@Jessef0226 and yet there is last-minute excitement anyway :)

@WalterMartin because people are incorrectly misinterpreting news (that’s already been touched on by metaculus mods no less)and you suddenly deciding to change/add in the criteria after the markets esssentially already closed that this can resolve 50/50 👎

@Jessef0226 to me the tga logistics post info is substantially new, the Metaculus admins have not yet commented on it, and it shifts the state of things even further towards yes.

@Sketchy You mean from like 2 weeks ago at this point? Thats not substantially new and was factored into the question, which is why it was still trading at 1% at close on the 31st

@Sketchy It seems they are waiving the disruption surcharge due to price competition. I don’t really read that as an update to their Red Sea shipping policy.

@Jessef0226 no the post I’m referring to is from Dec 30: https://tgalogistics.com/maersk-adjusts-red-sea-surcharge-for-india-usec-trade/

@ChadCotty it certainly explicitly confirms that they have a “Red Sea shipping policy”? I’m open to having fundamentally misunderstood something but I don’t really see how the post can be read any other way than explicitly confirming they are willing to ship things through the Red Sea - otherwise why have pricing for it? “We are waiving a surcharge for vessels transiting the Red Sea” pretty clearly implies… vessels transiting the Red Sea? That + the voyage makes this feel like a pretty clear yes to me, although ultimately I’m still betting based on my model of the Metaculus admins

@Sketchy I don’t think the pricing is for Red Sea shipping. That was the surcharge for the extra distance/fuel costs from avoiding the Red Sea (having to go around Africa). They just removed that extra surcharge because competitors were undercutting them on price.

Basically they are still going around Africa (at least for now), but they waived the surcharge to lower the price they had been charging for that route.

@ChadCotty

I don’t think the pricing is for Red Sea shipping

What does the first sentence of the post say to you then? Not a sarcastic question, legitimately curious.

@Sketchy What first sentence are you referring to?

@ChadCotty of the tga post, “Shipping giant Maersk has announced it will waive its ‘disruption surcharge’ for vessels transiting the Red Sea on the India–US East Coast (USEC) trade route.” (Bolding not mine)

@Sketchy Yeah it’s weird they said “for vessels transiting the Red Sea.” My understanding is that the surcharge was implemented when they stopped transiting the Red Sea/Suez and started going around Africa, and the purpose of the surcharge was to account for the higher fuel costs of the longer voyage.

So I’m assuming they meant “for vessels that normally transit the Red Sea,” since the surcharge was implemented in January 2024 when they stopped transiting the Red Sea.