Counted Volume vs Raw Volume on a Leaderboard

Look at a capped competition leaderboard and you will find two different volume figures attached to the same trader. One is bigger. The bigger one is not the one that pays.

This confuses people, and the confusion is expensive — traders keep pushing volume that has already stopped counting. Here is exactly what the two numbers are.

The two numbers

Raw volume is everything you traded on the eligible markets since you registered. No filters, no ceilings. It is the honest total of your turnover.

Counted volume is raw volume after the competition's daily cap has been applied, day by day. If the cap is $500,000 per trader per day, then for each day the competition takes the smaller of your volume that day and $500,000. Counted volume is the sum of those capped daily figures.

The cap applies per day, not to the total. That is the detail that changes strategy. A $500,000 daily cap over a fourteen-day competition is not a $500,000 ceiling — it is a $7,000,000 ceiling, reachable only by hitting the cap on all fourteen days.

Where the gap comes from

A worked example on a $500,000 daily cap:

Nearly half of that trader's turnover scored nothing. The leaderboard will still show $2,170,000 next to their name, because that is what they actually traded — but their rank, their points, and their projected reward are all computed from $1,120,000.

Compare against a trader who placed $280,000 on each of the same four days. Raw volume $1,120,000, counted volume $1,120,000, and an identical score — on roughly half the fee bill. That is the entire argument for spreading volume across days on a capped competition.

Why only counted volume moves rank

Rank is not computed from volume at all. It is computed from points.

Volume converts to VXP at a fixed rate — 1 VXP per dollar of spot volume, 0.1 VXP per dollar of perpetual notional — and the conversion runs on the capped daily figure. Perps are rated an order of magnitude lower than spot because leverage makes notional cheap to manufacture; rating them equally would turn a competition into a contest about leverage settings.

So the chain is: raw volume → daily cap applied → counted volume → VXP → rank → projected reward. Raw volume enters at the top and is discarded one step later. Nothing downstream of the cap ever sees it.

Some competitions also carry a separate points cap on top of the volume cap, and the points figure is floored to a whole number. Where both exist, whichever binds first is the one that bites. How VXP and daily volume caps work covers the rate table and the interaction in detail.

Why the leaderboard shows both

It would be simpler to show one number. Showing both is the right call for two reasons.

First, hiding raw volume would look like a bug. A trader who knows they placed $2.1m and sees $1.12m next to their name will assume the tracking is broken, not that a rule they half-remembered removed a million dollars. Showing both makes the cap visible rather than mysterious.

Second, the gap is information. A large gap tells you the field is running into the cap, which tells you the competition is compressing toward the top rather than spreading out — useful when you are deciding whether another day of volume is worth placing.

Competition pages state this explicitly under the leaderboard: total volume values are uncapped raw trading volume, daily caps only reduce counted VXP, and only VXP determines rank. If you remember one sentence from this post, that is the one.

Where each number is actually used

The two figures are not interchangeable, and different parts of a competition read different ones. Worth knowing which is which:

• Rank and points — counted. Always.
• Projected rewards — counted, via points.
• The minimum volume to qualify — counted. A $50,000 minimum means $50,000 of counted volume. Raw volume above the floor does not qualify you if the capped figure sits below it.
• Daily raffle eligibility — counted volume for that day. On competitions where the raffle bar sits far below the daily cap, the two are identical in practice; where they are close, the capped figure is the one checked.
• The "total volume" column and campaign totals — raw. This is the display number.

The qualifying-minimum case is the one that catches people. If a competition has a $500,000 daily cap and a $600,000 qualifying minimum, a single enormous day cannot qualify you no matter how large it is. You need at least two days of trading. That is the cap and the floor interacting, and both are on the page.

The practical rules

Three things follow directly from all of the above.

Spread volume across days. On a capped competition this is strictly better than concentrating it. Same score, lower cost, and you stay eligible for more daily raffle draws along the way.

Check your remaining daily allowance before pushing size. Competition pages show how much counted volume is still available to you today. When it reaches zero, everything else you trade that day is scored at nothing.

Read the floor as a counted number. When you are working out whether you can clear a qualifying minimum, do it in counted volume, with the cap applied to each day you plan to trade.

Browse live competitions to see the two columns side by side, or read how projected rewards are calculated for what happens after the points are set.