What Do Disrupted and Halted Sessions Mean on Polymarket Perps?
Your perp tracks the S&P 500 — the S&P closes for the weekend, and your position… keeps trading, keeps paying funding, can still be liquidated. Sessions logic is the piece traders discover mid-holding: it changes which feeds price your position, never whether the perps machine runs. Here’s what each state means and how to hold positions through them.
What do market sessions change on Polymarket Perps?
Only the feed sourcing for Index and Mark prices. The order book, matching, margin checks, funding, and liquidations run identically around the clock. Two categorized states exist: Disrupted — external feeds unavailable or failing sanity checks; Mark candidates fall back to whatever feed set is still healthy, ultimately the Index. Halted — the underlying itself has a trading halt or corporate-action freeze; same fallback logic. In both, the perp continues matching orders — see Mark vs Index mechanics for how the fallback chain works.
Why perps trade when the underlying doesn’t
Perps are contracts about a price, not the price itself — the continuous market (your ability to hedge, exit, or take exposure) doesn’t need the underlying to be open, only a defensible reference for fair value. That’s what the Index anchor provides: even with all external feeds degraded, Mark tracks Index and the machine functions. The design trade-off is real, though: weekend and after-hours perps carry gap risk — fair value can move substantially while the underlying can’t trade, and your Mark-based PnL absorbs the repricing when feeds return. The liquidation mechanics apply across sessions without mercy.
Positioning through sessions (the practical playbook)
Size for the gap, not the session. Overnight and weekend holds at high leverage carry repricing risk the intraday chart doesn’t show — the leverage playbook buffers section covers sizing for gaps.
Expect funding to keep flowing. Sessions don’t pause funding — a weekend hold pays the same hourly window structure (see the funding calendar reality). Project the full hold, not the trading-hours hold: the forecaster takes hours as input, and it means all hours.
Watch the fallback behavior. In Disrupted states, Mark leans on Index — if Index’s own sources are the degraded ones, Mark quality drops. Wide Mark-vs-your-model divergence during sessions is a signal to reduce, not to add (the sanity discipline applies to your own position marks, not just entries).
Corporate actions need reading. Halted states around corporate actions (splits, halts, delistings) are the sharpest resolution-adjacent events in perps — the disputes frame applies to how the underlying’s own reference resolves.
FAQ
Does Polymarket Perps trade 24/7? Yes — order book, matching, funding, margin, and liquidations run continuously regardless of underlying market hours. Only the feed set for Index/Mark changes with sessions (Disrupted/Halted states).
What happens to my perp when the stock market closes? Nothing stops: funding accrues hourly, liquidations remain live, and Mark prices via fallback to the Index anchor. The risk that changes is gap repricing when underlying feeds return — size overnight holds for it.
What does “Disrupted” mean on Polymarket Perps? External feeds are unavailable or failing sanity checks — Mark candidates degrade gracefully to the Index. Trading, funding, and liquidations continue; only price sourcing changes (see the price guide).
What does “Halted” mean? The underlying market itself has a trading halt or corporate-action freeze. The perp keeps trading with feed fallback — the position is live and at risk through the halt; see the sessions playbook.
Should I close perps before weekends? Depends on leverage and thesis horizon: high leverage + weekend gap risk + funding drag is a stack that kills positions held on a correct view. The buffer math for holding through non-trading hours is in the leverage playbook.
Educational content, not financial advice. Not affiliated with Polymarket. Last updated October 2026.