You do not need forty indicators to start trading. Event markets are an easier place to learn: every trade has a clear result, the outcome either happens or it does not, and it often arrives quickly, sometimes in five minutes. Below is a plan for your first ten trades that teaches the mechanics without costing you money or building bad habits.
Before your first trade
Sign up in the app with email or Google. A welcome account with $100 opens right away: the money is virtual, the prices are real, straight from Polymarket. The account lasts 3 days, and if you make a profit in that time you can withdraw it once in real money, up to $100. The conditions are covered in the article on the free account.
Five terms you will need:
- Outcome — an answer to the market’s question: “Yes” or “No”, a team, a price range.
- Outcome price — from 1¢ to 99¢, roughly the probability the market assigns to the event.
- Share — what you buy. Each share of an outcome that happens pays $1; one that does not pays $0.
- Position — the shares you hold in one outcome. You can keep it until the result or sell earlier at the current price.
- Resolution — the moment Polymarket records the result and positions close.
If a price feels like an odd way to write a probability, start with why prices are probabilities.
The sizing rule: keep it small
Your first ten trades are not about profit. They are about learning how the market moves and how you react to results. So each trade is small: $3–5 on a $100 account.
The reason is simple. On the welcome account equity cannot fall below $50, and the system will not accept a buy that would push it past that floor if it fails. Ten trades of $5 leave room to be wrong several times in a row and keep learning.
The buy panel shows how much more you can buy given every limit. You can set the “One-tap buy” buttons to your own amounts in your profile settings.
Trades 1–3: short crypto windows
Start with “Bitcoin up or down” markets on the 15-minute or 1-hour window. They suit beginners because the result arrives fast and needs no news reading: will BTC be higher or lower at the end of the window than at the start. The result is set by Chainlink, the same source Polymarket uses to resolve the market.
What to do:
- Open a window that has just started and look at the “Up” and “Down” prices. At the start they are usually near 50¢.
- Buy one outcome for $3. Write down why you chose it.
- Wait for the result without selling. Watch how your outcome’s price moved during the window.
Leave the 5-minute windows for later; it is easy to start clicking out of momentum there. The mechanics of short windows are covered in Bitcoin up or down.
Trades 4–6: sports before kick-off
Pick a match starting in the next few hours, in a sport you understand. Buy an outcome before the start, same $3–5.
The goal is to see how the price reacts to the game. After a goal or a break of serve your outcome’s price changes within seconds. In at least one of the three trades, try selling the position before the end: from your trades block under the event chart or in the Trades section. The whole position is sold at once, against the current orders in the book.
Note that a sale during a match fills at the best buyer’s bid, not at the chart price. If there are few bids, you may exit worse than expected. See the order book article and live sports markets.
Trades 7–8: an event settled by news
Take a market that resolves on news within the next 2 days: a central bank rate decision, a data release, a vote. Read the market’s rules tab first; it states the source and exactly how the result is decided.
This exercise builds the key skill of an event trader: telling “I think this will happen” from “I think the market is wrong”. If “Yes” trades at 0.85 and you are sure it will happen, your profit per share is 15¢ and your loss if wrong is 85¢. Sometimes the right call is not to trade.
Trades 9–10: review and repeat
Before the last two trades, reread your notes. It usually becomes obvious which markets you understood and where you were guessing.
Repeat two trades in the type of market that went better, with the same small size. If the account is in profit, check the withdrawal conditions: trades on at least 2 different UTC days, and no single event contributing more than 30% of the account’s profit. Ten trades spread over two or three days are also a natural path to a withdrawal.
What to write down after each trade
Four lines are enough:
- Market and outcome, entry price.
- Why you bought, in one sentence.
- Result in dollars, including the fee.
- What you would do differently.
Fees work as on Polymarket: they depend on the market and the outcome price, and some markets charge nothing. The fee is shown in the trade details.
Common beginner mistakes
- Buying at 0.95 because it is “certain”. The profit is tiny, and one surprise wipes out twenty such trades.
- Chasing losses. Doubling the size to win back a loss is the fastest way to the drawdown floor.
- Too many positions at once. Five open trades that can lose together are one big trade, not five small ones.
- Trading without a reason. If you cannot explain why the price is wrong, the market probably knows more than you do.
What comes next
After ten trades you have notes, a grip on the mechanics and maybe a first profit on the welcome account. The next step is the challenge rules, which add a profit target, a daily limit and consistency. For trading questions, see the help center.