Full Report(PDF).
Findings
- Political markets drive a disproportionate share (over 36%) of the total trading volume across Polymarket despite being a small portion of total markets on the platform (4%);
- Political market categories with the highest risk of insider trading (those determined by the decisions of an individual or small group of individuals in a military, executive branch or central bank) represent $8 billion in trading volume.
- In most markets, the success of longshot bets (defined as a bet of $2,500 or more at a price of 0.35 or less, implying ≤ 35% probability) aligned with expectation: overall, 14% of longshot trades bought the winning outcome;
- Political markets were the second most successful longshot bet category, with 25% of longshot bets succeeding, and the largest absolute volume of longshot bets placed on the winning outcome: we observed $35 million wagered in longshot bets, of which $9 million was bet in the first ten weeks of 2026 alone;
- Within political markets, those related to military and defence events are a clear outlier, with a disproportionately high longshot success rate of 52%. There is a noticeable spike in successful longshot betting just before these markets resolve, with more longshot bets placed on the winning outcome than losing outcome in the twelve hours before the market closed.
Earlier this month, a member of the US military was charged with insider trading after allegedly leveraging classified information to place a series of bets on Polymarket related to the US abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. This is just the latest scandal involving prediction market platforms – trading applications where users can exchange contracts on the outcome of real-world events.
Amidst a surge of media reporting and investigations into potential insider trades on these platforms – about everything from the Nobel Peace Prize, to presidential pardons, to US and Israeli attacks against Iran and even the weather – ACDC set out to determine whether these incidents reflect isolated, albeit recurrent, cases or a broader, systemic risk.
We analyzed all settled markets on Polymarket, one of the two main prediction market platforms along with Kalshi, and found that political markets with outcomes determined by groups of insiders display disproportionately high signs of trading on insider information. Within political markets, those related to military or defence actions show the clearest signs of widespread information asymmetries.
that is true for polymarket where everyone is there voluntarily. however, the same insider trading principles apply to stock market where your pension fund
is being tradedtrades and i bet you would care slightly more about that.no not really. as long as i don’t sell, it doesn’t affect me if it goes up and down all the time.
when there is someone with insider information on the other side, it goes down more often than it goes up, ending up affecting you.
uhh, i doubt that. at least as long as the company has a sane core business, it’s stable long-term (or rather goes up with the general economy). it can’t “go down more than it goes up” on average.
it can when you trade against insider trader. that is whole purpose of insider trading.
only when you do rapid trading. not if you hold for long times.
it is starting to seem like you have no idea what insider trading is. it has nothing to do with “rapid” or any other tempo of trading.
when you buy a stock for 10$, and the person selling it to you has secret knowledge, that tomorrow the government will issue regulation or w/e and as a consequence, the next day the same stock will have a value of 5$, you were scammed out of 5$ and you will never see them again. it has nothing to do with how long you will then own the stock or how the price will move in the future, or how fast and often you do your trades.
you would have not paid 10$ if you had the same information the seller has. that is what insider trading is. using privileged information that general public cannot have.
in any civilized society it is a crime punishable by law.