The 3% Bolsonaro bet that turned into a $95K payday

One Polymarket trader put roughly $3,800 on Flávio Bolsonaro as Brazil’s next president, when the market gave him just a 3% chance. The bet has paid off.

Less than a week ago, Predictbook saw Polymarket favoring Flávio Bolsonaro, the son of the former president and current prisoner, Jair Bolsonaro, even as polls showed a much closer race between him and incumbent Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

Now, the first round has delivered a major market shift with Bolsonaro's lead, and one trader’s earlier position benefited from it.

ProfessionalPunter bought 120,816 Flávio Bolsonaro “Yes” shares for roughly $3,776 when they were priced around 3 cents. After his first-round lead, Bolsonaro's now trading around 82%, so the position is showing some $95,000 at the time of writing (Monday, 13:UTC).

There will be a run-off between the two candidates on October 25. And if Bolsonaro ultimately wins the presidency, ProfessionalPunter's shares pay out about $120,816. That's a 2,600% gain from the capital invested.

From 3% to the runoff

When the position was opened, Bolsonaro was nowhere near the market favorite, and pre-election polling gave President Lula an advantage, and yet, Bolsonaro finished the first round with 47.03% of the vote on October 4, narrowly ahead of Lula’s 45.16%.

The market's reaction was swift and sharp, with Bolsonaro prices on Polymarket jumping from some 56% on October 3 to 82% on October 5.

The market currently has more than $171.86 million in total volume.

That doesn't mean the election is over, especially because the runoff is a different contest. This means that Bolsonaro still has to turn his first-round advantage into an actual majority by bringing in voters who backed other right-wing candidates.

Also, given the tight first-round results, Lula has the chance to take the lead.

Meanwhile, ProfessionalPunter is a very active, profitable trader overall. His Polymarket profile currently shows 993 predictions and $18.9 million in total volume, while his biggest win, per Polymarket, was $61,300, so should he bag the Bolsonaro bet, it'll nearly double it.

From the available information, he takes shots at low probabilities, such as 28,798 shares of “Trump out as President before 2027?” at 8 cents apiece, which he lost. But not exclusively so, as his portfolio also contains a lot of high-probability trades, for example, the Hungary trades at 75 cents/84 cents, winning both and making more than $30,000 in net profit.

Still, the Bolsonaro trade is a spectacular example of a risky longshot strategy occasionally paying off.