Polymarket Glossary: Copy Trading and Prediction Market Terms
Copy trading on a prediction market comes with its own vocabulary. Some terms describe how Polymarket works under the hood. Others describe the metrics that actually separate skilled traders from lucky ones. This glossary defines the words you need to read a leaderboard, judge a trader, and follow a strategy without guessing what the numbers mean.
Trading approaches
Copy trading
Mirroring another trader's positions automatically. When the trader you follow buys or sells, the same move is replicated in your account at a size you control. The goal is to ride a proven trader's edge instead of picking markets yourself.
Virtual (paper) trading
Copy trading with simulated money. A virtual wallet mirrors a real trader's trades in real time so you can watch the equity curve play out before risking anything. On Polyspect you can run several virtual copy strategies to compare traders side by side with zero downside.
Live trading
Copy trading with real money. Live copy trading places actual orders, usually with guardrails like fixed per-trade size, stop-loss, take-profit, slippage limits, and daily-loss caps to keep risk bounded.
Performance metrics
Expected Value (EV)
The average profit or loss a trade is expected to produce, weighted by probability. Positive EV per trade is the clearest sign a trader has a real edge rather than a hot streak.
Profit Factor
Gross profit divided by gross loss. A profit factor above 1.0 means a trader made more than they lost overall; higher is better. It rewards consistency rather than a single oversized win.
Reward/Risk
The ratio of average win size to average loss size. It tells you how much a trader typically earns when right versus how much they give back when wrong.
Max Drawdown
The largest peak-to-trough drop in a trader's account value over a period. It measures the worst losing stretch you would have lived through while following them.
Wilson win rate
A win rate adjusted for sample size using the Wilson confidence interval. A trader who wins 1 of 1 looks perfect on a raw win rate; the Wilson-adjusted figure discounts thin samples so small streaks can't top the board.
ROI
Return on investment: profit relative to the capital deployed. Useful for comparing efficiency across traders of different sizes, but easy to inflate on a single lucky bet, which is why it's only one input.
Win rate
The share of trades that ended profitable. Popular but misleading on its own: a high win rate with tiny wins and rare huge losses can still lose money. Read it alongside EV and profit factor.
Realized vs unrealized PnL
Realized PnL is profit or loss locked in on positions that have closed or resolved. Unrealized PnL is the paper gain or loss on positions still open, valued at current prices. Both matter, but only realized PnL is final.
Turnover
The total dollar volume a trader has moved. A turnover floor filters out dust accounts so rankings reflect genuinely active traders. See how these metrics combine on the trader metrics page.
Polymarket mechanics
Outcome shares
Tradable tokens representing one side of a market, priced between $0 and $1. A share pays $1 if its outcome wins and $0 if it loses, so the price reads as an implied probability.
CLOB / order book
The Central Limit Order Book where Polymarket orders are matched. Buyers and sellers post bids and asks, and the book shows available liquidity at each price.
Market resolution
The settlement of a market once its real-world outcome is known. The winning outcome's shares pay $1 each; all others pay $0, turning unrealized positions into realized PnL.
Mark-to-market
Valuing open positions at their current market price rather than cost. It's how unrealized PnL and a live equity curve are calculated before resolution.
Slippage
The gap between the price you expected and the price you actually got, caused by limited liquidity or fast-moving prices. Slippage limits cap how much adverse movement a copied trade will tolerate before skipping.
Drawdown
Any decline from a recent account-value peak. Max drawdown is the deepest such decline; ongoing drawdown is the current dip you're sitting in.
Funder / proxy wallet
Polymarket trades execute from a proxy (deposit) wallet derived from a user's main wallet. Public data identifies traders by this proxy wallet, which is how a leaderboard tracks performance over time.
Ready to put these terms to work? Browse the trader leaderboard to see how EV, profit factor, and Wilson win rate rank real Polymarket wallets, then start a free virtual strategy to watch a trader's edge before risking a cent. Prediction-market trading carries risk of loss, and past performance does not guarantee future results.