The prediction ties a vague, perception‑based condition to a specific market outcome:

If, by some point in 2025, it looks like President Trump’s actions cannot course‑correct U.S. inflation or the deficit, then public markets will go massively risk‑off.

To score it, we’d need (a) a clear point in 2025 when markets broadly concluded Trump couldn’t fix inflation/deficits, and (b) a resulting, durable shift to a risk‑off regime across major risk assets.

1. Macroeconomic backdrop in 2025

• Trump is in his second term starting Jan 20, 2025, after winning the 2024 election. (en.wikipedia.org)
• Inflation: After the April 2, 2025 “Liberation Day” tariff shock, April CPI came in at 2.3% year‑over‑year, the lowest since 2021, defying fears of an immediate inflation spike. (abc7.com) By September 2025, headline CPI was about 3.0% YoY, with core inflation also around 3.0%. (m.economictimes.com) Forecasts and commentary did warn tariffs could push inflation toward ~4% and stall disinflation, but that’s still within a moderate range rather than an obvious “inflation is out of control” scenario. (uobgroup.com)
• Deficit: The FY 2025 federal deficit was about $1.8 trillion, essentially unchanged from FY 2024, with debt roughly the size of the economy and projected to exceed its WWII‑era record as a share of GDP. Net interest on the debt topped $1 trillion for the first time. (crfb.org) That clearly signals no meaningful fiscal improvement, but large deficits and debt warnings pre‑date Trump’s second term, so it’s hard to identify a new, 2025‑specific “realization” that his actions cannot fix the problem.

In other words, deficits stayed very large and inflation hovered around 2–3% with some upward tariff pressure. This is concerning but not an unambiguous “macro has broken and Trump obviously cannot course‑correct” moment.

2. Market behavior in 2025

• April 2025 crash: Trump’s sweeping "Liberation Day" tariffs (10% baseline on almost all imports plus much higher country‑specific rates) triggered a sharp global selloff described as the 2025 stock market crash. Major U.S. indices dropped roughly 10%+ in early April, and it was the largest global decline since the 2020 COVID crash. (en.wikipedia.org) This is clearly a massively risk‑off episode, but it was tightly linked to tariff/trade‑war and recession fears rather than a discrete realization about inflation or the long‑term deficit.
• Rapid recovery and new highs: After tariff walk‑backs and policy adjustments, markets rebounded. By May–June 2025, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq had turned positive for the year and reached new all‑time highs by June 27, 2025. (en.wikipedia.org) By late November 2025, the S&P 500 was up roughly 12–16% year‑to‑date, with strategists projecting further gains into 2026 on the back of strong earnings and AI‑driven optimism. (reuters.com) That is a classic risk‑on environment, not a sustained, structurally risk‑off regime.
• Crypto: Bitcoin and crypto behaved like high‑beta risk assets—plunging during tariff scares in Q1–Q2 2025 and again in November 2025, when Bitcoin fell from over $120,000 to the low $80,000s, wiping out more than $1 trillion in value. (thecoinrepublic.com) But these swings coincided with policy shocks and speculative excess, not with a clearly identifiable, market‑wide conclusion that Trump had definitively failed on inflation or the deficit.

3. Why the outcome is hard to judge against his condition

• The antecedent is vague and unobservable: “when it looks like Trump’s actions are not going to be able to course‑correct inflation or the deficit” is not tied to a specific, observable threshold (e.g., inflation above X%, deficit above Y%, ratings downgrade, failed fiscal package). Analysts have warned all year that debt is unsustainable and tariffs are risky, but similar warnings existed before 2025. There is no discrete, widely recognized 2025 moment where markets re‑priced on the view that Trump cannot fix inflation/deficits.
• Risk‑off episodes do occur, but they are short‑lived and clearly driven by other triggers—mainly the Liberation Day tariff shock and subsequent trade/AI bubble worries. Markets then revert to a strong risk‑on stance with new highs and double‑digit equity gains for 2025, despite continuing fiscal concerns and only modestly contained inflation.
• Because the condition is not clearly met, we cannot cleanly say “the condition happened but his consequence didn’t” (which would make the prediction straightforwardly wrong). Instead, we have:
  • Persistent large deficits and moderate inflation,
  • Ongoing debate about whether Trump’s mix of tariffs, spending, and tax plans will worsen or mitigate those issues, and
  • Markets that oscillate between brief risk‑off shocks and an overall bullish trend.

Given this, the prediction is not cleanly confirmed (no lasting, deficit/inflation‑driven shift to a massively risk‑off regime) but also not cleanly falsified, because the triggering condition is so subjective and never clearly, uniquely realized.

Bottom line:

Deficits remain huge and inflation is sticky but moderate, while 2025 markets are, on net, strongly risk‑on. The specific conditional link Chamath asserted—“once markets see Trump can’t fix inflation/deficits, they’ll flip massively risk‑off”—cannot be clearly tested with available data, so the outcome of this prediction is best classified as ambiguous, not definitively right or wrong.