Galaxy Research has published a new report on how people trade on Polymarket, built with prediction-market historical data indexed and delivered by Stork Market Data. It covers 2.9 million retail accounts across the platform's full history, making it one of the deepest studies yet of prediction-market user behaviors.
Galaxy analysts used Stork Market Data to filter out suspected automated trading accounts, and drill down into account-level patterns. The resulting report shows how prediction-market traders behave after they win, after they lose, and what happens when they specialize in a niche.
Three takeaways stand out.
Most accounts lose, but the losses are small. 69.2% of retail accounts finished below break-even, and the group is down $338.9m in total. The median account is down about $3. The large losses sit with a small set of accounts at the tails.
Losing appears to drive traders away. After a loss, 15.2% of accounts opened no new position within 30 days, against 6.1% after a win. A losing account is about 2.5x as likely to walk away.
Specialization pays where an edge is plausible. 44.1% of traders put most of their activity into one topic. Sports specialists are the least profitable group, with 25.1% finishing ahead. Tech and science specialists lead at 41.2%, against 30.4% for generalists.
The report also finds that profitable traders bet bigger, and it weighs what new taker fees mean for the typical account.
The research ties these insights into patterns in trading decisions to the wider debate over whether prediction markets are casinos or forecasting tools. Anyone who builds, trades, or regulates these markets should read it.
READ THE FULL GALAXY RESEARCH REPORT
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