A reference for the terms used throughout Catalyst and this help center.
Term | Definition |
Account | Your trading account inside a challenge. Your balance lives here. |
Account balance | The value of your account based on realized and unrealized trading results. |
Ask | The lowest price a seller is willing to accept for a contract. |
Bid | The highest price a buyer is willing to pay for a contract. |
Challenge | What you run on your profile: the challenge you run on your profile to earn a payout. You can have one challenge active at a time. |
Contract | A YES, NO, UP, or DOWN position in a prediction market. Each contract resolves to either $1.00 or $0.00. |
Daily P&L | Your profit or loss for the current calendar day, shown in Portfolio. |
Determination time | The official time or date when a market's outcome is assessed. May be later than when the event appears to end. |
Drawdown | A decline in the balance including open positions from the highest realized account balance reached during the challenge. |
Event | The real-world question being tracked. Each event can contain one or more markets. |
High-water mark (HWM) | The highest realized account balance you have reached during the challenge. Used to calculate the max loss floor. |
KYC | Know Your Customer. Identity verification required before your first withdrawal. Handled through the payment provider. |
Limit order | An order that only executes at a price you specify or better. May not fill if the market does not reach your price. |
Liquidity | The volume of available contracts in the order book at different price levels. Higher liquidity means easier execution and tighter spreads. |
Market | A specific yes-or-no question tied to a real-world event that you can trade on Catalyst. |
Market order | An order that executes immediately at the best available price. Prioritizes speed over price control. |
Max loss | The trailing drawdown rule. If the balance including open positions drops that amount below the highest realized account balance reached, the challenge ends. Also called loss limit. |
Maximum market position | Your total position in a single market is capped at your account's max position size. This applies across every trade on that market, open or closed. |
Mentions | A market category featuring contracts about what specific people or entities will say or reference. |
NO contract | A contract that pays $1.00 if the event does not happen, and $0.00 if it does. |
Open P&L | Profit or loss from positions that are still open and have not yet settled. |
Order book | The list of active buy and sell orders in a market, showing available contracts and their prices. |
Partial close | Closing only part of a position. Partial closes do not count as qualifying trades, the position must be fully closed. |
Payout | A fixed cash amount, set by your account size, awarded once you pass the challenge. |
Polymarket | The prediction market exchange whose live event data and pricing Catalyst uses for its simulated trading environment. |
Position | Your current contracts in a market. |
Profile | Your permanent identity on Catalyst, tied to one name, one email, and one phone number. You have one profile, ever. Your challenges and accounts live under it. |
Qualifying trade | A single closed trade with realized profit at or above your account's qualifying trade amount. The core unit of progression on Catalyst. Each market can only produce one qualifying trade per challenge. |
Realized account balance | Your total closed profit or loss since the challenge began. |
Recurring market | A market that runs on a repeating schedule. Each instance is a separate, independent market, trading it on different days counts as separate trades. |
Resolution | The point when the outcome of a market is officially determined and contracts settle. |
Resolution source | The official data source used to determine a market's outcome. Defined in each market's About section. |
Settlement | The process of finalizing contracts at $1.00 or $0.00 after resolution. |
Spread | The difference between the best bid and the best ask in a market. |
Unrealized account balance | The value of your account including open positions, also called your balance including open positions. This is the number checked against the max loss floor. |
Wallet | Where your earned payout is stored. Accessible via the green wallet icon in the top-right navigation. Funds can be withdrawn or used toward Catalyst purchases. |
W-9 / W-8BEN | Tax forms collected during the verification and payout process. W-9 for US-based traders, W-8BEN for international. Handled through the payment provider. |
YES contract | A contract that pays $1.00 if the event happens, and $0.00 if it does not. |