Pool Pulse, October 2026: 211 Polymarket Whales Pass Our Checks, a Smaller Share Than in September

At 00:10 UTC on November 1, 2026, 211 of the 2,680 Polymarket wallets we had scored in full passed all four of our checks. That is 7.9%, about 1 in 13. On September 30 it was 166 of 1,346, or 12.3%. So more wallets pass than a month ago, and a smaller share of the ones we score. The share fell in mid-October, after a full rescore with fresh history, and stayed near that level while the number of scored wallets doubled. Return is the check that stops the most wallets: 77.8% of scored wallets missed it on November 1.

Pool Pulse is our monthly count of the wallets WhaleFinder has collected and scored, and of how many pass our checks. It names no wallets. Our methodology page explains how a wallet is scored.

How many wallets passed our checks in October?

211 of 2,680 scored wallets on November 1, up from 166 of 1,346 on September 30.

Collected means WhaleFinder, the part of Whalidate that finds wallets, has picked the wallet up from Polymarket's public data. Scored in full means we have read its whole history and replayed it. Passed means it met all four default checks:

• a return on investment of 15% or more;
• 30 or more settled trades;
• a worst drawdown no deeper than 25%;
• no single trade making more than half the profit.

Wallets not scored yet stay out of the pass-or-fail count. On November 1 there were 15,851 of them, 85.5% of everything collected, and we haven't judged them either way.

The September 30 row comes from our study of 15,371 wallets, which recorded no breakdown by check.

Why did the pass rate fall in mid-October?

Between October 13 and 15 we ran a full rescore with fresh history. After it, 97 wallets passed instead of 163.

The October 12 and October 18 snapshots sit on either side of the rescore and cover almost the same number of scored wallets, 1,274 and 1,292. Across them the passing count fell by 66, from 12.8% of scored wallets to 7.5%.

The extra failures showed up on the return check, which caught 887 wallets on October 12 and 973 on October 18. Each of the other three checks caught a few wallets fewer after the rescore than before it.

Then we added wallets to the catalog. Between October 18 and November 1, the collected count rose by 3,489 to 18,531, and scored wallets more than doubled, from 1,292 to 2,680. Passing wallets rose by 114, to 211. The pass rate moved from 7.5% to 7.9%, so the larger set passed at about the rate the rescore had left.

Which check do most wallets fail?

Return. On November 1, 2,086 of 2,680 scored wallets (77.8%) returned less than 15% on the money they put in.

Shares are of all wallets scored on that date. A wallet that failed two checks counts under both, so each column adds up to more than the number of wallets that failed. On November 1, 2,469 scored wallets failed, and between them they missed 3,707 checks, about 1.5 each.

Return does most of the filtering, and its share grew in each snapshot. Of the 2,469 wallets that failed on November 1, 2,086 (84.5%) missed the return check, some of them along with another one.

The other three checks moved less. In every snapshot about 30% of scored wallets had fewer than 30 settled trades. The 30-trade minimum is a threshold we set for scoring. A short record can still belong to a good trader; it just can't show much yet. One trade carried more than half the profit for 21.1% of scored wallets on November 1. Drawdown caught 9.0%, the fewest of the four.

What can't these snapshots tell you?

Which wallets came in and which dropped out. Each snapshot keeps totals only.

The counts are net. If some wallets started passing between two dates and the same number stopped, the total wouldn't move. So the fall of 66 across the rescore is a net figure, and how many wallets crossed the line in each direction isn't in the data.

A failed check describes a record on one date, and so does a pass: neither settles whether a trader is lucky or skilled. In our study of 15,371 wallets, the wallets that looked best over one 60-day period weren't reliably the best over the next.

The count also moves from day to day. Our week 44 report counted 208 passing wallets out of 2,685 scored on November 2.

A pass says the wallet met our published criteria on that date. It says nothing about which wallets our own strategies use, and we keep that private.

What does this mean if you copy whales?

Look at return first, and check a wallet again after its history updates.

Return on the money put in is where most scored wallets fall short, so it's the first number worth reading on any wallet you're thinking of copying. A pass is tied to the history it was scored on: the rescore moved the count from 163 to 97 between October 12 and October 18. Check a wallet's current figures before you rely on an older result.

In the app's WhaleFinder you can tighten or loosen each of the four checks, and the defaults are only a starting point. To see how a set of wallets would work under your own rules, start a strategy on paper first. Past results don't predict future ones.