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A copy trade is a standing instruction: watch this wallet, and whenever it trades, place my own version of that trade. Ballista is a client for Polymarket, not an exchange. Every copy is a real order placed on Polymarket’s order book from your own Polymarket proxy wallet, with your own funds. Nothing is pooled, nothing is netted against other users, and the leader never sees or touches your account.

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How the engine follows a wallet

Ballista’s worker holds a live feed of Polymarket settlements — the moment trades settle on-chain — and an in-memory index of every wallet its users are watching.
1

A settlement arrives

The worker checks every fill in it against the watched-wallet index. Almost all settlements touch nobody’s target and are dropped immediately.
2

The leader's fills are folded together

When a leader sweeps a book, one settlement can contain a dozen small fills. Ballista folds them into a single order per token, side and role, at the summed size and the volume-weighted average price. The leader took one position, so you take one position — not a dozen minimum-sized ones.
3

Your settings decide

The folded trade runs through your copy trade’s filters, caps and sizing. If anything rejects it, the reason is recorded and nothing is placed.
4

Your order goes to the book

Ballista submits a fill-and-kill order from your proxy wallet at a limit price derived from your slippage setting. If the exchange rejects it, the order is retried up to the number of times you configured.
Because the fold happens before your filters run, price and value bands are tested against the sweep, not against each individual fill. A leader sweeping from 53¢ to 57¢ is one decision at the average price, not six decisions at six prices.
Both sides of the leader’s flow are followed. Ballista matches on the wallet itself, so it sees the leader’s trade whether they crossed the spread or had a resting order filled — though a wallet whose edge is in resting orders is a poor one to copy. See Choosing a trader.

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What gets skipped, and why

Three things stop a copy before your own settings are even consulted: Everything else — sides, price bands, value bands, size limits, spend caps, market gates — is your configuration. Each is documented in Copy trade settings.

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Take-profit and stop-loss

Take-profit and stop-loss are live-only features. They arm on the positions a copy trade opens with a buy, and a position is tracked whenever the copy trade has any exit condition — a TP or SL price, a TP or SL percentage, or a balance level.
  • Price levels are checked event-driven, against the same settlement feed. The instant anyone trades that token at or through your level, the exit order is sent. If that order fails, the position goes back into the index and is retried on the next price tick.
  • Balance levels (Balance TP / Balance SL) are polled every 30 seconds. When your wallet balance reaches either one, the copy trade is switched off and every position it is tracking is market-sold.
A balance level is a liquidation and a stop, not a pause. The copy trade stops mirroring immediately and stays off until you switch it back on yourself.If a sell fails, the trade still stops and that position is left open — nothing retries it, because the copy trade is no longer being monitored. You get a copy trade stopped entry in your notifications naming the position, and closing it is then yours to do by hand.Switching the trade back on while your balance is still past the level stops it again within 30 seconds. Adjust or clear the level first.
Exit orders are sells priced from your sell slippage, defaulting to 30 if you have not set one. A balance liquidation prices its limit off the live market, falling back to your entry price only when no quote is available — a stop-loss fires precisely when the market has moved against you, and a limit derived from the entry price would sit above the book and never fill.
Take-profit and stop-loss are not simulated in backtests. A backtest replays a tape of the leader’s own fills and has no price path in between them, so it cannot know when a level was touched. The backtest API rejects those fields outright rather than pretending. See Backtest fidelity.

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The lifecycle of a copy trade

The engine rebuilds its watch index every 30 seconds, so creating, pausing, resuming or deleting a copy trade takes effect within about half a minute. Nothing is backfilled: a copy trade mirrors trades the leader makes after it goes active, not positions they already hold.
Deleting is one-way. The setup cannot be edited or re-activated afterwards, so if there is any chance you will want it back, pause it instead — a paused trade keeps everything and switches straight back on.Deleting also disarms its stops, within the same half-minute. Any position it was tracking stays open in your wallet — the shares are yours and nothing sells them — but no take-profit, stop-loss or balance level applies to them any more. Close them yourself, or pause instead and let the stops do their work.
A copy trade deployed from a backtest result is created paused, deliberately. A simulation assumes every admitted order filled, so a one-click hop from a simulation to real money would start mirroring a stranger the moment the form was submitted. Switch it on yourself when you are ready.

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Where to manage it

Telegram

The full form — every setting on this site, one button each. Your list marks each setup active or paused.

Web terminal

A short form for the settings most people change, the Active switch for pausing and resuming, and the execution history table.
Both surfaces drive the same account and the same engine. A copy trade created in Telegram appears in the terminal and vice versa, and editing one from either surface only changes what you actually changed — settings the surface you are on does not show are left exactly as they were.

Copy trade settings

Every field, what it does, and what happens when you leave it blank.

Choosing a trader

Taker share, and why some profitable wallets cannot be copied at all.

Backtesting

Replay a leader’s real trades through a configuration before you fund it.

Placing orders

Trading by hand, alongside your copy trades.