Polymarket Study Finds 69.2% of Retail-Labelled Accounts Lost Money

About 69.2% of roughly 2.9 million accounts screened for manual trading activity on Polymarket’s international platform ended below the break-even point, with combined losses of $338.9 million in the analysis.

The study described the accounts as “retail.” It also found that 15.2% did not open another position within 30 days after a loss, compared with 6.1% after a win.

The analysis defined expert traders as accounts that traded markets in at least five categories and concentrated more than 60% of their trading in one topic. Experts accounted for 44.1%.

Sports made up 47% of expert traders, but only 25.1% of those accounts were profitable, the lowest share among the topic groups. Technology and science traders had the highest profitability rate at 41.2%, though their sample was small.

The median position size was $13.96 for profitable traders and $10 for those who lost money. The analysis found no clear link between how long traders held positions and whether they were profitable.