Trader consensus favoring no magnitude 9.0 or greater earthquake by the end of 2026 rests on the extreme rarity of such events, with USGS records showing only a handful worldwide in the past century and none since the 2011 Tōhoku event. The remaining timeframe is brief, and recent activity has been capped at an 8.8 in Kamchatka during 2025 plus scattered lower-magnitude events. Great earthquakes typically require simultaneous rupture across hundreds of kilometers on major subduction zones, a process with recurrence intervals spanning decades to centuries in any given region. While model runs and stress accumulation studies highlight ongoing seismic risk in zones such as Cascadia or the Japan Trench, no official monitoring data indicate conditions poised for an immediate M9+ rupture before the market closes.