Reading the result
The instinct is that a profit leaderboard is full of market makers and lucky runs that cannot be followed. On this tape, most of both boards are ordinary directional traders whose entries keep resolving in their favour. 79 of 94 scored Kalshi traders and 81 of 94 Polymarket traders finished the window in profit at a flat $100 per entry, and 74 and 61 are still in profit after 4 points come off every return for slippage and fees.
The gap between the two medians is price, not skill. Polymarket leaders buy a lot of favourites at 80 cents and up, which win often and pay little, so the typical return sits in the 0 to 10 percent band. Kalshi leaders pay lower prices for similar win rates, so each win pays more and the typical return sits a band higher.
Rank tells you almost nothing. Every group of ten on both boards produced between six and ten profitable copies, and the best records sit in the middle and the bottom of the boards, not the top. The number one trader on a profit board can be a losing copy when the profit came from sizing a few positions enormously rather than from a per-entry edge, which is exactly what a flat stake removes. The variables that do predict a good copy are the ones the leaderboard hides: win rate against the price paid, the depth of the settled record, and whether the profit came from many entries or a handful. Every name above links to a public record that shows all three, and the backtester runs the same simulation on any rule.
Population and method
- Board. The top 100 traders per venue by observed net profit on Rivo's recorded trades, ranked at 2026-09-23T03:49:50.818Z. The same ranking as the public traders page.
- Window. Recorded entries from 2026-06-25T03:49:50.818Z to 2026-09-23T03:49:50.818Z, the trailing 90 days at export.
- Eligibility. buy_yes and buy_no entries with a recorded price. Sells are never scored. Entries in markets still open at export are counted but not scored.
- Stake. $100 per entry, filled at the recorded price, held to settlement. PnL is 100 / price − 100 on a win and −100 on a loss.
- Scoring floor. A trader needs at least 30 settled entries to enter any share, median or count. Thinner records are listed and downloadable, not scored.
- Cost case. 4 return points subtracted from every scored trader, a flat stand-in for slippage and fees.
- Not modelled. Entry delay, partial fills, depth, position limits, capital lock-up, and correlation between a trader's entries in the same market.
The full definitions, including the settlement rule and the payoff arithmetic, are on the methodology page.