How to Follow a Trader's Portfolio on Polymarket

Every Polymarket position sits on a public wallet address - there is no privacy setting for what you hold, only for who you are. That means any trader's current positions, closed trades, and realized P&L are readable by anyone who has their address or display name, with no account and no permission needed. polymarket-tui turns that public ledger into something you can search, watch, and check back on from the same watchlist that holds your starred markets.

Following changes what you see, not what you hold

"Follow" here means exactly one thing: the trader's address gets saved to your watchlist so you can find their profile again without re-searching. It does not mirror their trades, does not alert you the moment they open a position, and does not touch your balance in any way - polymarket-tui has no copy-trading feature. What you get is a standing bookmark to a public profile: positions, size, entry price, current price, and P&L, refreshed whenever you open it. The judgment about what any of that means stays entirely yours.

That is also why "whale watching" on Polymarket looks different from the same idea on a centralized exchange or a copy-trading app: there is no API key to grant, no subscription to a signal, and nothing that executes on your behalf. A large, consistently profitable wallet is public information the moment it trades - polymarket-tui just makes that information easy to find and keep coming back to.

The same search box, a second mode

Press / to open search, then tab to flip its results from MARKETS to TRADERS - one input searches both, Gamma's public-search endpoint returns whichever matches by name. down flows focus from the input into the trader list, which shows name, a shortened address, and bio side by side; the panel on the right fills in as soon as a row is highlighted, before you have followed anything.

The overview panel previews the whole position book

Highlighting a trader loads their overview: total position value, then up to eight of their largest holdings by current value, each with its P&L in cents and percent. It is the same widget the market screen's expanded trades view uses when you open a name straight from the tape, so a trader you notice from an interesting trade and one you find by searching land in an identical view. Nothing is followed yet at this point - you can arrow through several names and compare before deciding.

One key, and it sticks

space on a highlighted trader row toggles follow, marking the row with a leading * immediately. Followed traders are written to the same watchlist file as starred events (~/.local/share/polymarket-tui/watchlist.json), so W opens one screen with two tabs - Events and Traders - rather than a separate feature to remember. The Traders tab lists every followed address with its current positions value, fetched fresh each time you open it; enter jumps from that list straight to the full profile. There is no push notification when a followed trader opens a new position - checking in is a deliberate action, either opening the watchlist or pressing R to refresh it, not a background service watching wallets for you.

Active, Closed, and History

Opening a trader (from search, the watchlist, or a trade in the tape) drills into a profile pane with a header line - positions value, all-time profit, all-time volume, markets traded - and three tabs: Active positions sorted by current value, Closed positions with realized P&L (most recently settled first), and History, the raw activity feed of trades. A strip along the bottom charts all-time cumulative profit. tab cycles the three panes; enter on any row that references a market opens that market directly, so a position that catches your eye is one keypress from its own order book.

What one followed wallet actually shows

Here is a real profile, searched, followed, and opened in the app - as of 2026-08-17 07:31 UTC. Address 0x392a...49262d, display name Maru.lucky.nala.lenu: $10,976 in current positions, +$1,524.06 in all-time realized-plus-unrealized profit on $247,562 of lifetime volume across 220 markets traded. The two largest positions are both "No" contracts on Middle East ladders: 3,380 shares of "Strait of Hormuz traffic returns to normal by September 30?" bought at an average 68.2c and now marked at 89.5c (+31%), and 1,273 shares of "US-Iran 60 day negotiation period extended?" - the contract this blog covered on August 15 as it fell toward its lows - bought at 45.0c and now marked at 95.3c (+112%), the payoff from having bet No while the extension question kept fading toward a No resolution.

/ Maru.lucky.nala.lenu   tab: TRADERS
* Maru.lucky.nala.lenu   0x392a...262d
positions $11K

Strait of Hormuz No  $3,025  +31%
US-Iran extension No $1,214  +112%

space follow   enter open profile

None of that required an account. Read-only wallet tracking - your own portfolio or anyone else's - works the same whether or not you have credentials configured; only placing orders needs a funder address and key.

Try it: search a name you recognize from a market's trade tape, tab into TRADERS, and space to follow.

$ uv tool install polymarket-tui
$ polymarket-tui

The install page has Homebrew and one-liner options. Press / once it's open, tab for traders.