Visible does not mean trade-ready

A market can be searchable and still not accept a new order. It can also remain discoverable after it closes. Treating visibility as permission to trade is a fast way to read stale prices or build an order path that cannot run.

The market state is part of the data, not a label to glance at after the price.

Check the state tuple

Read active, closed, archived, acceptingOrders, and enableOrderBook together. A basic trade-ready check is active, not closed, and accepting orders; the book still needs to be enabled for an order path that depends on it.

Keep negRisk beside those fields when an event connects several mutually exclusive markets. It changes how the market relates to the rest of the event, even though it does not by itself mean the book is open.

Separate the stages

An upcoming market may exist before its order book opens. A closed market may stay discoverable for research. An archived market is read-only, and a restricted market may be unavailable to some jurisdictions.

Those states can look similar in a list view. They are different answers to the question: can this order be submitted now?

Save the timing fields

Record startDate, endDate, and closedTime with the state you read. Keep the time zone in your note and attach the timestamp of the API response.

A price captured before the start of trading is not the same evidence as a price captured after the book opened. A page that remains visible after closing should not be treated as a live quote.

Check again before acting

Re-read the state after a delay, a notification, or a material rule update. If acceptingOrders changed, rebuild the execution plan instead of reusing an old snapshot.

The useful question is not whether you can find the market. It is whether the market's current state lets the exact order path you planned exist right now.

Further reading: Market details · Prices and order books · Order lifecycle.

Explore the markets: Open Polymarket (referral link).