Both Polymarket and Kalshi have a market for: When will traffic at the Strait of Hormuz return to normal?
These markets will likely be with us for a while, so we wanted to put together a dossier to help orient you with the market, and share some context, insights, and signals to watch.
Now, the first thing you should know is the question behind the question. As we’ve written before, resolution rules matter. Once you look at the rules, it helps to think of the question as Will commercial traffic through the Strait of Hormuz recover to a specified level before a specified date?
This begets three questions: what counts as commercial traffic, what level, and by what date. The information for the settlement criteria comes from IMF PortWatch, which is a joint IMF–University of Oxford project built on satellite AIS data supplied through the UN Global Platform.
What’s meant by commercial traffic? Portwatch counts five commercial categories: container, dry bulk, general cargo, ro-ro (roll-on/roll-off), and tanker.
Naval vessels, escorts, and small craft are excluded, which is likely why published estimates of pre-war Hormuz traffic vary so widely. The counts of 100–130 or 120–140 ships a day you might’ve seen include vessel classes PortWatch doesn’t count. So, if you see people talking about ships counts, make sure you know they’re talking about the counts that actually matter for these markets.What’s the specified level? The thresholds for Polymarket and Kalshi are slightly different. Polymarket resolves Yes on a seven-day moving average of transit calls "equal to or above 60"; and Kalshi requires it “above 60.”
The IMF's dataset documentation explains that a transit call is recorded “when a ship transits through the chokepoint boundary.” (Note that multi-day transits count once, and the same ship is not counted twice inside 48 hours.)What’s the specified date? The exact “return to normal by” date depends on the contract you purchase.
So how high is the bar?
A seven-day average needs to be at (or above) 60.
For reference, across PortWatch's pre-crisis year (February 28, 2025 to February 27, 2026), traffic averaged 74 transits a day, and the weekly average was at or above 60 on 77% of days. However, during the winter months the monthly average was below 60, even in peacetime (58 in November, 51 in December, and 56 in January). And the weekly average ran under 60 for 53 straight days from November 18, 2025 to January 9, 2026.
So, if the strait starts to re-open during the winter months, the usual seasonal slowdown will add friction.
A few other caveats worth being aware of:
The IMF describes AIS as “a self-reporting system.” While it’s compulsory for international commercial ships above 300 gross tons, the system isn’t perfect. Vessels have been known to switch off their transponder to avoid being targeted, which, in turn, removes them from the dataset.
Maritime analytics firm Windward, for example, recorded more than 1,100 vessels hit by GPS and AIS interference across the Gulf in a single 24-hour period.Polymarket's rules state that revisions “will be considered” but “will not disqualify a previously published data point from qualifying.” In other words, a later correction can rescue a position but cannot destroy one.
The rules also confine data-integrity disputes to "clerical or other similar errors" and specify they “do not include cases where IMF Portwatch differs from alternative sources.”
This matters because third-party trackers republishing PortWatch figures don’t always match it. For June 30 the seven-day average is 26.7 in the IMF series against 33.9 as republished by straits.live, an independent tracker; July 19 is 4 transits against 15; July 23 is 0 against 10.
Remember, only the IMF number can settle a contract.
So, with all this out of the way…
Where do things stand?
Well, not great.
The most recent published day is August 2, when the seven-day moving average was 3.86.
The closest it has come to “normal” was a seven-day average of 26.71, on June 30, which was still only 45% of the 60 bar, and about a third of the pre-crisis average of 74.
Leading up to that peak, Trump announced a completed deal on June 14. This deal included a ceasefire, the naval blockade being lifted, the strait reopening, no transit charges for 60 days, and a waiver on oil sanctions. It was then signed on June 17. At the time of signing the seven-day average stood at 3.14.
From June 17 to June 23, daily transits ran 8, 19, 9, 23, 6, 10, and 11.
On June 24 and 25, it ran 44 and 43.
Then 27, 24, 11, 24, and 14 through June 30, which was when the average peaked at 26.71, thirteen days from the signature.
Complicating matters…