ANCHORAGE, Alaska — If the speculators are to be believed, the historic handshake at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson on August 15th was not a beginning but a full stop. Polymarket, the prominent prediction exchange, places the probability of a second Trump-Putin encounter before December 31st at a flat and unambiguous zero percent — a verdict backed by nearly seven million dollars in trading volume over a single day. The market, in short, has spoken with the confidence of a slammed vault door.

The stakes are considerable. The Alaska summit represented the first face-to-face meeting between the two leaders, convened to explore potential peace terms in the grinding Ukraine conflict. A follow-up meeting would signal substantive diplomatic momentum; its absence suggests the encounter may have produced little of actionable consequence. Prediction markets, which aggregate the cold arithmetic of collective wagers, assign no meaningful probability whatsoever to such a sequel materializing within the calendar year.

Only a sudden breakthrough in Ukraine negotiations — or a crisis demanding emergency consultation — could compel the market to revise its austere arithmetic.