How many ships transit the Strait of Hormuz week of May 11?

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Market context

Transit through the Strait of Hormuz remained heavily suppressed during the week ending 17 May, with the corridor still operating far below normal after the March disruption. The IMF’s PortWatch tracker is the settlement source here, and the recent pattern has been for only a narrow set of vessels to be recorded on any given day, rather than a clean return to pre-crisis flows. That matters for the week of 11–17 May because the market is not asking whether the strait is technically open, but whether daily transit calls accumulate enough to clear a low bar against a still-fragile baseline. On recent counts, traffic has tended to sit in the low tens per day at most, well short of the roughly 138 vessels a day seen before the conflict.

Comparable episodes point to a slow recovery rather than an immediate normalisation. CSIS reported that since 4 March, only a fraction of vessels have made it through, with many ships remaining stranded or rerouting, and that transits have increasingly been conditioned on Iranian approval, pre-arranged routes and added fees. USNI also said on 1 May that commercial transits had fallen to their lowest level since the first days of the Iran offensive. For traders, the main catalysts are any new security warnings, changes in Iranian enforcement, and whether major tanker operators resume scheduled crossings or continue to avoid the route. IMF PortWatch updates and shipping-traffic reports are the key dependencies for the final total.

Sources: 1 · 2 · 3 · 4 · 5

Methodology

We track How many ships transit the Strait of Hormuz week of May 11? on the five venues with material liquidity for prediction markets. Live odds come from the Polymarket Polygon order book — the only source that ships real-time data under an open licence. For Kalshi, Betfair and Manifold we list platform attributes (fee, KYC, settlement, payment) instead of fabricated odds, because their APIs use non-comparable contract definitions.

Resolution & payout

At resolution the UMA oracle takes over: a proposer posts the outcome with a bond, any token holder can dispute within two hours. Without dispute the result is accepted and the smart contract distributes USDC instantly.

On Kalshi (CFTC-regulated) resolution runs through their in-house clearing engine in USD. Betfair Exchange settles after match end in the account's local currency. Manifold pays no cash — only its in-platform "mana" currency.

FAQ

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A YES share pays $1.00 if the event happens, $0 otherwise. A NO share pays $1.00 if the event doesn't happen. The market price between 0¢ and 100¢ is the implied probability.

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How reliable are the quoted odds?

The YES/NO percentages are the live mid-prices of the Polymarket order book. On deep markets they move every few seconds; on thinner ones you'll see short plateaus.