Note: Upcomers Prediction Markets are fully simulated evaluation accounts, the same as every other Upcomers product. You are trading real-world outcomes on a simulated funded account, not placing real-money bets.
Here is exactly how a trade works, from the moment you open a market to the moment it settles. Read this once and you will know the whole flow. Zero surprises.
You trade binary YES or NO questions on real-world events: politics, economics, sports, crypto price outcomes, macro events, and more. Prices and final outcomes come from the underlying market source. That source is the authority for how each event resolves.
Step 1: Browse the markets
Open the platform and browse the available markets. Two things to know up front.
Only markets that resolve within 30 days are listed. No multi-year holds. Everything you can trade settles soon.
Markets are grouped into events. Related questions on the same real-world event sit together.
A market you already hold stays visible, even if it drops off the main grid. You never lose sight of an open position.
Step 2: Open a position
To open a trade, you choose three things.
A market (the question you want to trade).
A side: YES or NO.
A number of contracts (more than 0).
You need enough available cash to cover contracts times price, plus a small buffer for the fee. If you do not have the cash, or the position would push you past your exposure limits, the order will not go through.
Step 3: Understand contract pricing
Every contract is priced between 0.00 and 1.00. Think of the price as the market's current read on the odds.
YES price = the current market price.
NO price = 1.00 minus the market price.
So if a market trades at 0.60, YES costs 0.60 per contract and NO costs 0.40 per contract. The two sides always add up to 1.00.
The trading fee
A small trading fee applies per trade. It scales with the price.
It is highest near a 0.50 price, at about 1.75% of the traded amount.
It is near zero at prices close to 0.00 or 1.00.
Settlement and admin closes are fee-free.
Step 4: The 5-second speed bump and the re-quote check
Your order does not fill instantly. This is by design, and it protects you.
The 5-second speed bump. After you submit, the order fills after a 5-second delay, at the live price at that moment. Not the price you saw when you clicked. The live price when the 5 seconds are up.
The re-quote tolerance. If the price moves more than 0.05 away from your quoted price between submit and fill, the order is rejected. At the real fill price, your cash and exposure are checked again. If there is no live price, the order is rejected too.
The takeaway: a submitted order is not a guaranteed fill. If the market runs while your order is in the speed bump, the platform will not fill you at a price you did not agree to.
Step 5: Close a position
Closing works the same way as opening. It goes through the 5-second speed bump and the same re-quote check.
If the quote is bad or has moved too far, the close request is simply cleared. Your position stays open, there is no penalty, and you just retry. You are never punished for a close that could not fill at a fair price.
Step 6: Binary settlement
When the event resolves, settlement is binary. Each contract pays out on one of two values.
1.00 if your side matches the outcome.
0.00 if it does not.
We never guess a payout. If a result is not yet known, we wait until it is confirmed by the underlying market source. Settled and verified, then paid. Never before.
A worked example
You are on a simulated $100,000 Signals account. You buy 1,000 YES contracts in a market priced at 0.60.
Cost to open: 1,000 contracts times 0.60 = $600 (plus the small per-trade fee).
The NO side, for reference, would cost 1.00 minus 0.60 = 0.40 per contract.
Now the event resolves.
If it resolves YES: each contract pays 1.00, so your 1,000 contracts are worth 1,000 times 1.00 = $1,000. Your gain is $1,000 minus the $600 you paid = $400 before the small fee.
If it resolves NO: each contract pays 0.00, and you lose the $600 you staked.
That $600 position sits comfortably inside the Signals per-question exposure cap on a $100,000 account, so the order clears the exposure check.
You cannot hold past your time limit
You cannot hold a position past your challenge time limit. A market must resolve on or before your evaluation deadline, or you cannot open it in the first place. No open positions can outlive the challenge.
Equity and breaches
Your equity is marked to market continuously against live prices. That live equity feeds the standard Upcomers breach pipeline, exactly like every other Upcomers product. If your equity hits your drawdown level, the account is breached, same rules, same engine.
General Rules Notice
This product, like all Upcomers programs, is subject to our standard trading rules and policies. These include our framework on prohibited strategies and our guidelines on responsible trading and gambling-style behavior, both of which apply across all our challenges, funded accounts, and products.
We recommend reviewing both articles before you begin trading:
Prohibited strategies: https://help.upcomers.com/en/articles/8703143-what-trading-strategies-are-prohibited-at-upcomers
Rules restricting gambling: https://help.upcomers.com/en/articles/11484528-rules-restricting-gambling
Pick a market. Pick a side. Wait for the result. Zero surprises.