🔮 TILTED: How ‘Betwick’ Lost 70% of His Bankroll and Climbed Back to $800K

PLUS: What pizza-counting OSINT bros miss about Iran

European tech worker by day, Polymarket whale by night, Betwick [main wallet, follow on X] has amassed over $800k in lifetime profits since he started trading during Biden’s Hotswap Summer of 2024.

The Oracle spoke with him about his early wins in movie markets and Trump mentions, recovering from a 70% drawdown, and how he’s trading the Iran crisis.

This interview has been edited for length. All answers are his own.

---

What can you reveal about your non-Polymarket life?

I work in tech in Europe, nothing related to trading. My university course was maths and finance based, and I’d been gambling since I was a kid with my dad on sports, horses, just 10 or 20 pounds for fun.

But when I signed up to Polymarket, you could see people on the leaderboards who’d made a million dollars in a year. I thought, “I read all the news anyway and maybe there’s a money-making opportunity here.”

Joining a couple Discords was another turning point. You get to talk to other people trading every day, and that really speeds up your learning.

Like a lot of the larger traders, you started during the Biden dropout. Why did that moment draw so many people in?

It was a very personal story. You get to know a US president over a number of years, even people in Europe. So it’s this personal story of “will he, won’t he?” It was in the news constantly. You see the interviews, you see the debate where he struggled. I think it’s just something you tend to have an opinion on. And it was such a long buildup of news stories, so that draws people in.

What were your first big wins?

My first taste was the mention markets, tracking Trump speeches. One of my first bigger wins was betting against him saying inflammatory things at a town hall.

Trump would say “Comrade Kamala” and “Sleepy Joe Biden” a lot at rallies. But town halls are much more question and answer, much less combative. After watching videos from his previous campaign, I bet against some of the things he’d said all the time in rallies that wouldn’t really fit that Q&A pattern.

I wasn’t doing statistical analysis. I was more indexing on the scenario he was going to be in rather than tracking how many times he said “border” in the last 10 speeches. My edge was looking at the actual setting versus all the different rallies.

You don’t do mentions much anymore. What changed?

My account has grown so quickly that mention markets just don’t have enough liquidity for me to spend time on now. That’s one tip I’d give to young traders: if you’ve got a lower bankroll, you can focus on lower liquidity markets that more experienced traders are leaving out because it’s not worth their time. You can find much bigger edges in those and focus on a niche.

You also did well on movies. What was your approach there?

I wouldn’t share too much on the movies because I still use that methodology. But it’s not vibes at all. I’m not a movie fan, I wouldn’t go see the film or watch trailers. I would see what the vibes were from early reviews on Twitter, then model that with some other stuff. It’s box office opening weekends. There’s interesting modeling you can do.

Midway through last year you had a big drawdown. What happened there?

The big loss was Romania, which has been covered by other people. Then I lost quite a bit on ‘Israel strikes Iran’ at the last minute, where it looked like they were going to negotiate for a few more days and Israel did the surprise attack.

Betwick’s wallet at the bottom of his drawdown

I still think those two were good bets. But what happened after was I was kind of tilted, I guess, in the poker sense. I was probably not trading too well after losing quite a big chunk of the portfolio. I made a bad bet on the South Korean election, just trying to over-trade, trying to win back cash. I was trying to live trade the election results without having done all that much background research.

A few things helped me recover. Definitely take some time off. Take like a week, maybe even longer. Stop trading completely. Take a few days not thinking about it, not trying to think about the markets you’re in.

After a few days when the dust settles, go back and analyze the positions from a more cold-hearted way when the emotions are gone. Ask: was this good trading? Was this the right size? Would you make this trade again today?

Talk to me about position sizing. Do you use Kelly criterion?

I tend to stick to 1/3 Kelly-ish on my bigger positions. But I’ll only really be going that big on one position a month, maybe not even that. I think people with a full-time income that isn’t from trading should probably be sizing bigger. You’ve got alternative income, so you can afford to size a bit bigger. You’re also researching less markets, so if you’re really spending time on one, that’s another reason to go bigger.

That does add variance, so you need to make sure drawdowns aren’t going to affect you negatively long term. In the early days, I had 50% of my portfolio on Moana, but my portfolio was really small then. Even on the Iran markets in January, I had a third of my portfolio across correlated Iran positions.

People don’t think enough about correlation in their positions. You can easily over-size on correlated positions, especially for big US elections or Iran markets where there’s so many different markets that are correlated. For example, I had a bunch on US strike Iran, and if the US strikes Iran, obviously the odds of Khamenei being out also rise.

Ok let’s talk about Iran, where you have some of your biggest current positions, mostly betting on a cooling off. How do you think about what’s happening now?

Betwick’s current Iran positions

For the last few weeks, my take has been Trump wouldn’t do a punitive strike as punishment. We’ve shifted into this pressure campaign of let’s get Iran to the table.

Last week there was an article every day about officials talking about strike plans. Every podcast was about imminent strikes. But to me it seemed like classic Trump ‘Art of the Deal,’ pressure the other side and get them to the table.

What I thought was interesting: why would all these US officials be leaking strike ideas if they were just going to do it on a Saturday? They’d probably be keeping quiet. You’re getting almost too much strike vibes from the press and US officials. It felt like a pressure campaign more than a real war plan.

On January 14th, you built a massive “no strike” position when all the OSINT pizza guys were going crazy. How did you see through that?

Trump had already given himself an off-ramp that same day, saying Iran should stop the executions. He changed the goalpost from “don’t shoot protesters” to “don’t execute prisoners,” which is much easier to fulfill. Then he repeated that and said Iran agreed to stop executions.

The odds went crazy for a strike that day based on jets heard in Iraq, bases being evacuated, no-fly zones. But I thought Trump was by far the most important piece of evidence. That was more about picking which sources to prioritize and not panicking.

If you follow OSINT pages or people tracking flights, all you’re seeing all day is a new tanker showing up in Qatar, three jets in Jordan. That feed will naturally incline you to think something’s about to happen. But I think it’s better to almost ignore all of that and focus on the macro.

You’re only really seeing what they want you to see with open-source stuff. Look at those people watching B-2 bombers going the wrong way before the Iran strike. I don’t think you’re really going to see a strike on those things. It’s better to make longer-term predictions on the macro stuff.

How do you see the current Iran situation playing out? And what events would make you change your mind?

I think we’ll get one to two months of negotiations. There’s a decent chance of a deal that at least the US and Iran would be happy with. Israel will be harder to please, they’ll push on ballistic missiles.

Iran will give enough flexibility on the nuclear side that talks won’t fall apart straight away. But Iran holds firmer than you’d imagine in negotiations, so maybe Trump gets impatient. The most likely scenario is one to two months of negotiations, decent chance of a deal, but maybe more chance of it falling apart.

For things to change, I’d be looking for Trump growing increasingly impatient, setting new red lines or ultimatums, maybe ramping up pressure in other ways. Like in Venezuela, he was ramping up bombing of boats. Maybe he tries a blockade on Iranian oil ships.

With Israel I’m less confident predicting their moves. And then keeping an eye on how negotiations are going.

Any final words of wisdom?

I try to think of things that are repeatable. If I can use information I learned one time again, that’s really valuable because it means I’m using time really well.

Like I researched Fed rates a lot for the last year, working out how Fed messaging works, how they’re guiding markets throughout a month, how the CME Fed Watch futures tell you what the market’s thinking. Once you’ve learned that for the first few months, you can use that information again and again for every Fed rate meeting.

Similar with movies. Movies are happening every week, so once you’ve got modeling built, that’s time-saving.

Make sure you’re confident in your thesis from a macro level so you’re not going to get swayed by small bits of noise. Make sure your sizing is correct. If you’re feeling uncomfortable with the sizing or it’s keeping you from sleeping, maybe size down. That might be for the best long term even if you don’t make as much on that bet, because it might prevent a bad cycle.

Get your sizing right, be confident in the bets and reasons you’re doing them, and the emotion sort of follows from that.

---

Disclaimer

Nothing in The Oracle is financial, investment, legal or any other type of professional advice. All odds are time sensitive and subject to change. Anything provided in any newsletter is for informational purposes only and is not meant to be an endorsement of any type of activity or any particular market or product. Terms of Service on polymarket.com prohibit US persons and persons from certain other jurisdictions from using Polymarket to trade, although data and information is viewable globally.