belikewater

I'm decreasing my forecast (a little late) because there's almost no time left.

I initially thought an agreement involving Syria could be likely, but one seems less likely at the moment. But lots of other options are always possible. For example, it should not be forgotten that Tunisia and Algeria signed a military cooperation agreement in October, and it's not inconceivable that another party could join that agreement. It wouldn't be Morocco, obviously, but a month ago, Tunisia's PM said that Libya and Tunisia share national security interests. And the UAE is already involved with many countries in the region. Still, it is hard to picture trilateral or larger arrangements in the time frame of this question (6+ months), as they tend to involve so many negotiations, and I haven't seen public declarations that any such negotiations are in the works.

One thing I wonder about is the Bab al-Mandeb area. A separatist group backed by the UAE has taken over a lot of Yemen, including Mayun Island in the Bab al-Mandeb. I wonder whether they might be considered or this question, and whether they might seek some security arrangement with Djibouti. The Yemeni rebel group now also reportedly control the island of Socotra, near Somalia. As Djibouti has security arrangements with Somalia, an arrangement involving Djibouti, Somalia, the Yemeni separatists, and the UAE might be reasonable. I don't know the stance of the Yemeni group with respect to their African neighbors, though, and the separatist group might not be considered a "country" for the purposes of this question.

Egypt also signed a security agreement with Oman in July. And other arrangements are in place or in various stages of discussion.

There are a lot of public bilateral arrangements, and probably a lot of secret arrangements. I don't think it would be that implausible to add an additional partner to such an arrangement or to start a new one, but I don't think that's most likely to happen in the time frame of this question.

My forecast has been too high on this question. With Israel continuing attacks in Gaza, I think the situation is still too raw for countries to join the accords.

>=70% looks very clear at this point.

I do think they're headed to Togo soon, following recent meetings between officials from Togo and Russian officials in Moscow, but the forecast period is almost over.

The RSF just just took control of the Heglig oilfield in South Kordofan province. Reuters reports that, "Heglig, which lies along Sudan's southern border, houses the main processing facility for South Sudanese oil, which makes up much of the revenue for South Sudan's government. ... Oil is transported through the Greater Nile pipeline system to Port Sudan on the Red Sea for export, making the Heglig site vital both for Sudan's hard-currency earnings and for South Sudan, which is landlocked and relies almost entirely on pipelines through Sudan. The war that erupted in April 2023 between the Sudanese army and the RSF has repeatedly disrupted South Sudan's oil flows, which before the conflict averaged between 100,000 and 150,000 barrels per day for export via Sudan."

The RSF will likely leverage this control with South Sudan to make deals for arms and supplies to flow through South Sudan. Any such deals could potentially reduce their dependency on the UAE, but it's more likely that the UAE will help them to market the oil.

The RSF also just conducted an attack in Kalogi, which is near El Obeid and is getting closer to Khartoum. And while there's a lot of distance between Kalogi and Khartoum, a lot of it is open space. While it wouldn't be easy to take all of this territory, it's likely easier than trying to take some densely populated area.

The time frame remains very tight, though, and the resolution criteria for this question are very strict.

I'm increasing my forecast because of the Trump administration's recent ultimatum that European NATO countries will need to take the lead in their own defense by 2027. 

I'm repeating my forecast here to say that I am 99% certain that the peak value of the Case-Shiller index will be lower in 2026 than in 2025, because the value for July 2025 was less than the value for June 2025. If we exclude 2022 because of its extreme volatility (the highest in the index's entire history since 1987), then looking either at the entire history of the index, or just at from 2010 onward, seeing a July value less than a June value predicts a lower peak value the next year with 50% sensitivity and 100% specificity. I expect the 2026 peak value to be approximately 2.5-4.0% lower than the 2025 peak.

As I wrote in my first forecast on this question, "The index went up by ~6 [actually 6.003 from peak to peak] in the past year and ~13 the year before [more if you consider the period July-July, not just peak to peak]. 350-331 = 19, so this question is asking whether home valuations will continue to go up over the next couple years the way the have in the past couple years." If the index will reach a lower peak in 2026 than in 2025, then the question will be asking whether the index will go up by 19+ between its peak in June or July 2026, and July 2027. The only years in which the index has grown by more than 19 from July the year before through July of that year are 2005, 2021 and 2022; 2004 was close and gets an honorable mention. In other words, the only years that saw that much growth were right before the peak of the housing bubble and in the early years of Covid. (And the only years we saw the index fall by anything close to 19 were during the GFC, but even then, the index never fell by 19+ from June to June or July to July.) I think it would take extreme circumstances to see a similar rise between 2026 and 2027.

I will maintain a forecast of 10% for now, allowing for the possibility of extreme changes in 2026 and 2027, whether from a new pandemic or large-scale economic changes. 

I'm repeating my forecast to add Redfin's new analysis and predictions for next year. They expect that 2026 will be the start of the "Great Housing Reset," but still, they state, "We expect the median U.S. home-sale price to rise 1% year over year in 2026." As I discussed in my first forecast, the Case-Shiller index is a metric of the valuations of all existing homes, not of some median or mean sales price, and these are not the same. I don't think it's likely that the median US home sale price will grow in 2026, but it's not impossible; however, I think the peak value of the Case-Shiller index in 2026 will be lower than that in 2025.