Geopolitical Forecasting
The shape of
what might happen.
SIGMA Futures Group makes structured, probabilistic assessments of geopolitical conflict, escalation, and systemic risk — explicit odds, set down before events and checked against the outcome.
sigma /ˈsɪɡmə/ · noun
- statistics. the standard deviation — a measure of how far outcomes spread from the expected; the shape of uncertainty itself.
- Greek. the eighteenth letter (Σ, σ); in mathematics, the summation — many parts gathered into one.
- SIGMA. the discipline of taking the measure of what might happen before it does — and seeing volatility clearly enough to move through it well.
Mission
Foresight in service of the long horizon.
Most risk analysis is built for the next quarter. SIGMA is built for the longer horizon. We take seriously that the world has entered a period of systemic transition — geopolitical, economic, ecological, technological — in which old base rates are loosening and the risks that matter most are those that compound quietly and arrive together.
Reading that clearly is not about profiting from disorder. It is about helping capital and institutions move through volatility without being broken by it — and, where the choice exists, steering toward the more durable arrangements a long transition rewards.
A situation rarely resolves to a single outcome, but to a field of them, each with its weight — which is the plural in Futures. The work is to read that field early, and to keep the ones worth having within reach.
Clear sight in the present, in service of resilience over time.
Approach
Rigour you can interrogate — even when the record stays private.
Most geopolitical commentary is unfalsifiable: fluent, plausible, and impossible to grade. SIGMA works differently. Every assessment commits to explicit probabilities over defined scenarios, states what would change them, and is scored against outcomes once events resolve.
01 — Probabilities and horizons
How likely, by when, against what
Every assessment gives an outcome an explicit probability, a horizon, and the alternatives it is weighed against. Uncertainty is stated as a magnitude.
02 — Made in advance
Dated, fixed, on the record
Assessments are timestamped and locked before events, so the track record is real rather than reconstructed after the fact.
03 — Scored, then revised
The framework answers for itself
Calibration is tracked internally and the method is corrected where it errs. The record is shared with clients, not broadcast to the world.
Foundations
- Why do some confrontations end in settlement while others end in war?
- Why do some institutions act on a risk while others wait for proof?
- What signals appear before a system crosses a threshold?
Grounded in an original body of work on how civilizations hold together or fragment under stress, SIGMA's framework resolves the many dimensions of conflict into a single coherent structure — drawing on game theory, military strategy, decision psychology, complex-systems dynamics, and bargaining theory, among others — composed into one direction-aware architecture, auditable end to end within the firm, extended by AI and open-source intelligence, directed by human judgement.
Worked example
From decomposition to decision.
An assessment is only useful if it changes what you do — and the method is general enough to take whatever question matters to you. Below, select a risk class to follow it end to end: weighted scenarios, the signals that move them, and what each path means for a market position or an operating business. The others are worked within an engagement.
"Over the next quarter, how should an energy-exposed business weight a transit disruption at a critical chokepoint — and what does each outcome imply?"
Scenario decomposition
What drives it
- Posture of the principal state actors and any live diplomatic channel
- Rules of engagement for external naval forces in the corridor
- Recent incident tempo and the insurance market's appetite for the route
What we'd watch
- War-risk insurance quotes and tanker rerouting on the route
- Naval deployment changes and transit counts through the strait
- Trigger events — a vessel seizure, mining, a direct strike
Market read
- Oil is a convex risk: the modal path is range-bound, the tail gaps hard — skew and risk-reversals price it better than directional spot
- Freight and war-risk premiums move first and often lead the oil price
- Energy-importer currencies soften across the disruption scenarios; exporters firm
Operator read
- Hedge the distribution, not the headline — buy cheap convexity against the tail rather than fully hedging the base case
- Pre-book alternative routing and buffer inventory ahead of the indicator triggers, not after
- Check force-majeure and price-adjustment clauses now; pre-commit actions to set thresholds so calls are made cold
Illustrative specimen. Figures are notional and do not represent a current assessment of any live situation.
"Over the next year, how should a firm dependent on advanced-node semiconductors weight a cross-strait disruption — and what does each path imply for supply and price?"
Scenario decomposition
What drives it
- Posture of the principal powers and the state of cross-strait political signalling
- Allied force presence and declared red lines in the theatre
- Election and leadership-transition calendars on both sides and in Washington
What we'd watch
- Exercise tempo, ADIZ incursions, and coast-guard interdiction patterns
- Advance chip-inventory build and rerouting by major buyers; foundry utilisation signals
- Insurance and shipping-rate moves on regional routes; export-licence actions
Market read
- Advanced-node supply is concentrated and slow to substitute — the tail is a step-change, not a drift; the convexity sits in supply-chain equities and options, not spot
- Semiconductor and hardware names carry the cleanest exposure; broad tech beta lags the specific bottleneck
- Safe-haven and USD bid firms across the escalation paths; regional currencies soften
Operator read
- Qualify second sources and build strategic inventory of critical nodes ahead of the indicator triggers, not after
- Map single points of failure to specific fabs and routes; pre-negotiate allocation priority
- Pre-commit reroute and substitution actions to indicator thresholds so the calls are made cold
Illustrative specimen. Figures are notional and do not represent a current assessment of any live situation.
Emergence
Large change is rarely a single event.
It emerges. Pressures accumulate — quietly, across years — until a system reaches a threshold and reorganizes into a new state. By the time the change is visible as an event, the shift that produced it is usually well underway. Reading the world well means looking past the headline to the layer beneath: which phase a system is in, what is gathering inside it, and the new state it may be moving toward.
The practice is built the same way: it begins where the method is proven — conflict and escalation — and is made to extend, over time, toward those slower emergences. The worked example shows the surface; the substance is the layer beneath it — the pressures behind an event and where they lead, read in depth, and sustained, on the questions that are yours.
Services
Two ways to engage.
Advisory
Commissioned assessment
A finished judgement scoped to a specific question, exposure, or decision: the probabilities, the reasoning behind them, the indicators to watch, and what would force a revision. Conducted and delivered in confidence.
Membership
Standing intelligence
Periodic assessments for a vetted membership — structural regional outlooks, base-rate analysis, and scenario work across the risks that matter to you. Built for continuing awareness rather than any single decision. Admission by application.
Intelligence is the cheapest input to a large decision. The value of this work lies in the judgement it brings to the decisions that matter — because on exposures of consequence, being approximately right early is worth more than being precisely right late, and the difference is rarely small.
Membership
Considered, periodic, and small.
Membership is deliberately small and admitted by application. It suits institutions and principals who want SIGMA's judgement on a continuing basis without commissioning bespoke work for every question.
Currently admitting a founding cohort, at charter rates.
Frequency
Periodic assessments
Structural outlooks and scenario analysis delivered at a regular interval, with interim notes when a situation moves materially.
Reference
Base-rate library
Access to the reference work behind the forecasts — the historical frequencies and analogues the estimates are anchored to.
Access
A standing line
A direct channel for context on developing situations, within the scope of the membership.
The sharpest, situation-specific work remains within commissioned engagements.
Principal
Matthew Keogh
SIGMA Futures Group is led by Matthew Keogh, an independent analyst working at the intersection of geopolitical forecasting and systemic risk. He built the firm's proprietary framework for structured conflict assessment — informed by his wider research concerning civilizational coordination: how complex societies cohere, absorb shocks, and manage the long-horizon and systemic pressures that precede conflict.
Through SIGMA, he seeks to connect rigorous strategic analysis with a longer-term inquiry into resilience, adaptation, and the futures that become possible when intelligence is applied across scales.
Enquire
Begin a conversation.
For commissioned work, membership applications, or to request a sample assessment, send a brief note. Enquiries are treated in confidence.
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