Chokepoint Pressure Index

The Probability Desk · Chokepoint Pressure Index

Where the world's trade is being squeezed right now

A universal owner can't diversify away the seas. This reads live satellite-AIS transit counts at the maritime chokepoints that carry global oil, gas and goods, and measures how far each is running from its own normal — the early-warning gauge behind every supply-shock scenario.

Source · · as of

System pressure

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What's stressed now

Transit deviation from baseline · by chokepoint

Severe (<−25% or >+25%) Stressed (±10–25%) Normal range (±10%)

Methodology & data sources

What this is. A live read of maritime-chokepoint stress for long-horizon owners — not a trade signal. Each chokepoint's current transit level (trailing 7-day mean of daily vessel counts) is compared to its own 2025 daily-average baseline. Deviation = current ÷ baseline − 1. Large negative deviations flag disruption, blockage or rerouting; large positive deviations flag surges or diversion onto an alternate route.

Live feed. IMF PortWatch — satellite Automatic Identification System (AIS) vessel tracking, modelled into daily transit and trade-volume estimates. Queried from the public ArcGIS FeatureServer Daily_Chokepoints_Data (layer 0) at services9.arcgis.com/weJ1QsnbMYJlCHdG. Baseline and current both drawn from the same series so the comparison is internally consistent. PortWatch refreshes weekly (Tuesdays); the latest available date in this snapshot is 2026-06-14.

Honesty notes. Vessel counts are modelled estimates from AIS, not customs-verified throughput, and can be revised. Tanker-share figures are the share of annual transits that are tankers, from the PortWatch chokepoints reference layer, used to flag energy-weighted routes. The "system pressure" gauge is a derived, equal-weighted average of the absolute deviations across the eight chokepoints shown — a directional composite, labelled as such.