Automated trading

The Chase bot is an automated strategy that runs on a single market at /split (Auto trade in the top navigation, titled Automated trading on the page). It watches the order book, buys when your entry signal fires, and sells by your exit rules — take-profit, stop-loss, and a wind-down before settlement — repeating for as many rounds as you allow. Each side of the market (Yes / No, or Up / Down) has its own settings and can run its own bot at the same time.

When to use it. You have a view on a volatile intraday market (a live game, a timed crypto Up/Down window) and want the bot to react faster than you can click, within limits you set in advance.

Note

BOOPOLY is in Beta. A Real run places orders with your funds, following the settings you choose. Each run comes with its own controls — shares per entry, max open positions, stop-loss, a window loss limit, a round limit and Stop — and we suggest trying your settings in Sim first and starting with small sizes. Risks and common misconceptions explains how stop-losses and fills behave on a live order book.

#Real vs Sim

The panel has two modes, chosen by a tab:

• Real — runs on the managed 24/7 server worker. It keeps trading even with your browser tab closed. This uses your real balance.
• Simulated — a paper-trading run. It fills against the live book but places no real order, so nothing touches your funds or your pUSD collateral. Sim runs locally in your browser and pauses when you close the tab. You set a Virtual capital amount for it.

Note

A run is either browser-driven (Sim) or server-driven (Real), not both. Yes and No can each run their own bot on the same market.

#Setup flow

1. Open a market and press Auto (the grid button, "Automate this market") next to an outcome, then choose Guided setup (the chat wizard, see Conversational order builder) or Set it up yourself. The run appears in the list at /split.
2. Pick the Real or Simulated tab. For Sim, set your virtual capital.
3. For each side, choose Run or Skip this time. Each side you run has its own settings below.
4. On a timed Up/Down window, optionally turn on Relay (see Relay).
5. Work through the panel in order: ① When to buy → ② How and how much to buy → ③ When to sell → ④ Winding down before settlement → ⑤ When to stop the run.
6. Optionally press Script to read the whole strategy back in plain words, or Backtest to replay it over recorded markets (see Backtest).
7. Press Start 24/7 (Real; Start ladder for a Custom ladder) or Start run (Sim). A confirmation dialog summarizes the plan first, so on a Real run nothing moves until you confirm.
8. To end a run, press Stop. Stopping cancels resting orders and handles leftover shares the way "Unsold shares when YOU press stop" says (sell at market by default), so it asks you to confirm first.

Tip

Prefer limit orders where you can. They rest as maker orders and pay neither Polymarket's taker fee nor the platform fee. See Fees.

#Conversational order builder

Instead of filling in the panel by hand, you can use the chat wizard. It asks one question per step and fills in the same panel settings, then opens the run in /split, where you review it and press Start. It starts in Sim by default.

The wizard steps are: mode → side → entry → order type → size → pacing → exit → stop → confirm (a Custom ladder skips the order-type step). It offers three entries — Buy the bounce, Chase the climb, and Custom prices (the panel's Bounce, Climb, and Custom); anything it does not ask about (for example fair-price entry or the volatility cap) keeps the panel defaults, which you can change in the panel before starting.

#Settings reference

Section labels below match the panel. Defaults are the values a brand-new panel starts with; the panel then remembers your last settings (a draft carried over from another market says so). There is no reset link — save a setup as a script to bring it back (see Scripts). The defaults are only a starting point — set the parameters for your own strategy.

#① When to buy

How the reference price works. There is no lookback window. The bot measures drops from a ratcheting peak: it rises with every new high and never moves down on its own, so a drop is cumulative — a slow bleed counts the same as a sharp dump. The low is the lowest price since the peak last rose. After a buy the reference restarts at the current price, and after a sell it restarts at the exit price, so the next round needs a fresh move.

#② How and how much to buy

#③ When to sell

Note

The stop-loss does sell. When it fires it cancels any resting take-profit and sends a market sell at the bid; if that sell is not filled it retries. It is a trigger, not a guaranteed price, and it needs a bid on the book to sell into — see Risks and common misconceptions. (Copy trading's loss limit behaves differently: it only stops buying — see Copy Trading settings.)

#④ Winding down before settlement

With Hold to settlement, the wind-down only stops buying — it never sells.

#⑤ When to stop the run

#Fair-price entry

Fair price is an entry signal for crypto Up/Down markets. The bot estimates this side's win chance from the coin's live price (the price the market settles on) and buys while that fair price beats the ask by at least your edge (default 12¢, range 1–50¢). Buys are paced by Gap between buys and Max open positions.

• Only back the leader still applies; Don't overpay is not used (the edge already does that job).
• The optional Volatility cap (Strict / Standard / Loose) blocks entries while the coin is moving fast. It scales per coin and needs about 30 seconds of prices before the first entry.
• On a market with no coin price the option is hidden, and a saved Fair-price setting switches to Bounce.

Note

Fair price is an entry rule, not a forecast; backtest results describe past recordings only. We suggest trying it in Sim before a Real run.

#Relay

On timed Up/Down windows (for example 5-minute crypto markets), Relay runs the same settings across consecutive windows. Set Windows to run (2–288) and a Relay loss cap.

• When one window ends, the next starts automatically with the same settings. Each window is a separate market; the run card adds up P&L across all of them (Relay · N windows).
• Sim: virtual capital carries over from window to window; the loss cap is optional. The relay stops when it has run all its windows, hits the loss cap, runs out of virtual capital, or can't find the next window.
• Real: offered only when real-money relay is switched on for the platform; otherwise the Relay switch appears in Sim only. The server opens the next window shortly before the current one ends, so no browser is needed. A Relay loss cap is required. The relay ends when the balance can't cover a window or the cap is reached, and when either side's relay ends the other ends too.
• Stop ends the whole relay, not just the current window.

Tip

Relative settings (%, ¢ of edge) carry across windows. Absolute prices on a Custom ladder do not — each new window reopens near 50¢, so a ladder set far from that may never buy.

#Backtest

On BTC, ETH, SOL, and XRP Up/Down markets (5-minute, 15-minute, and 1-hour windows), a Backtest button sits next to Script above the Start button. It replays your current settings second by second over recorded order books, using the same engine as the 24/7 server.

• Choose the coin, window length, range (This run — the windows a started or finished run actually covered, and the default when there is one — or the last 24, 96, or 288 windows, default 288), and side (Up, Down, or Both, where each side runs as its own bot and P&L is added per window).
• Results show total P&L, win rate, fees, max drawdown, and average per window, compared with Buy & hold and No trading, plus an earlier 70% vs later 30% split and a 95% range for the average.
• Recording started on 2026-09-30 and keeps 60 days. Windows not fully recorded are skipped.
• The simulation is conservative: orders are judged 1 second after sending, a resting limit fills only when the market trades through it, and full fees are charged. Each window runs on its own, so the relay loss cap is not simulated.

Note

A backtest describes how settings behaved on past recordings; it is not a forecast. The earlier 70% / later 30% split is there as a consistency check: if only one part made money, or the settings were adjusted until the total looked good, the result most likely reflects those recordings rather than the market.

#Scripts

Scripts are optional. The Script card at the top of the panel is off by default; turn on its switch (Use a script) to show Save and Load. Save keeps the current settings for both sides as a named script (up to 20); Load restores one of My scripts or the Presets. Loading a script only fills in the panel — nothing starts until you press Start. A run that has started or finished keeps its own settings, so it shows only Save: save it as a script to load it into a new run.

#Limits

• Up to 10 real runs at once per account. The panel shows Real runs live: n / 10; stop one to start another. Sim runs are not counted, and a relay's next window is not a new start.
• Only one run per side of a market per mode — two runs on one market would sell each other's shares.
• Stop all stops every real run at once; each handles its shares by its own "Unsold shares when YOU press stop" setting.

#Before a Real run can start (preflight)

A Real chase must clear these checks before the Start button appears. The panel shows exactly what's missing and how to fix it, in this order:

The first time you switch to the Real tab you also answer six short risk questions (Before you trade for real); until you pass them the panel stays on Simulated. A wrong answer shows the explanation and lets you try again; the questions are drawn from the misconceptions listed below.

Note

Simulation runs only require login — they skip the region check, the trading setup, and the risk questions, because paper trading never touches real funds or on-chain approvals. That's why a Sim chase can run even where a Real one is blocked. The same region + trading-setup gates apply to normal trading and copy trading, since they share the underlying checks.

#What "Enable trading" sets up (one-time)

The first time you trade for real, BOOPOLY runs a quick, gasless setup — you don't pay any gas, and you only do it once per account:

1. Deploys your Smart Wallet (the on-chain account that holds your trading funds), if it isn't deployed yet.
2. Creates your exchange credentials so orders can be placed on the Polymarket CLOB.
3. Sets token approvals so the exchange can move your collateral when an order fills.

After that, the chase (and every other trade) starts without re-doing setup. If you switch devices, BOOPOLY restores the setup from the cloud instead of asking you to sign again.

Note

The region check only blocks order placement — browsing, charts, and simulation always work. It runs when you start a run; a run already going keeps going. If the location check can't be reached, it allows trading, so a brief network problem doesn't block you.

#Risks and common misconceptions

These are the questions users ask most often. The same points appear in the short quiz before your first Real run.

1. "A 10% stop-loss sells at exactly −10%." 10% is the point at which the bot starts selling; the fill is the price the book offers at that moment, which can be better or worse. On thin five-minute books, gaps of a few cents in either direction are common, and a brief dip can trigger the stop even if the price recovers a second later.
2. "The stop-loss always gets me out." A stop-loss sells into the bid, so it needs a buyer on the book. While there is no bid, there is no price to measure the loss against and no one to sell to, so no sell is placed; shares still held when the market ends settle at $1 or $0. This applies to Sim and Real alike: a stop-loss is a sell trigger, not a guaranteed exit.
3. "My 55¢ limit filled at 36¢ — something broke." This is expected. A limit buy never pays more than its limit and takes a better price when the book offers one, so paying less is in your favour. Stops and targets are measured from the price you actually paid, not your limit.
4. "Hold to settlement means it never sells." It only switches off take-profit. Stop-loss, the window profit target / loss limit, and your own Stop still sell.
5. "Sim profits predict real profits," and "Sim keeps running after I close the tab." Sim uses the live book with virtual money; real orders also meet slippage, queue position, thin liquidity, and fills that go to other traders first. Sim also runs only while its browser tab is open.
6. "Held means it settled." Held means the shares were never sold and are still in your hands. Each held lot shows Settling (no price to value it yet), now worth (the market still trades; this is the live price), or settled at ($1 or $0 once the market resolves).

#Requirements

• Logged in with trading enabled (a one-time gasless Polymarket V2 setup). The panel guides you through login / enable-trading if needed (see preflight above).
• Real runs need funded pUSD collateral; the bot pre-wraps one position's worth of USDC.e → pUSD when it starts (a Custom ladder pre-wraps the cost of one round of the ladder). See Deposit and Withdraw.
• Shares per entry must be at least 5.
• Real runs execute on the 24/7 server worker; you do not need to keep a tab open. Sim runs require the browser tab to stay open.

#Related

• Placing a Trade
• Orders and P&L
• Fees
• Copy Trading: Introduction — including Live copy (dynamic copy trading)
• Getting Started