Trader consensus heavily favors no magnitude 9.0 or greater earthquake through 2026, reflecting the extreme rarity of such megathrust events on the USGS historical record—only five have occurred since 1900, with the most recent in 2011. Recent global monitoring shows peak activity at 8.8 during the 2025 Kamchatka event, followed by typical 7.0–7.8 quakes in 2026 without precursors indicating rapid strain release on major subduction zones. Seismic catalogs confirm M9+ events average roughly one to three per century, consistent with current low strain accumulation signals from continuous USGS networks. While forecast uncertainty exists, an unexpected full-margin rupture on high-risk faults like Cascadia or southern Chile before year-end remains the primary low-probability pathway that could shift odds.