At the end of a round, traders are ranked by ROI. The highest one wins. ROI is not the biggest profit in dollars. It is profit measured against the money the trader actually put at risk.

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Why ROI and not profit

Traders do not all race with the same amount of money. If the winner were whoever made the most dollars, the trader with the biggest account would win almost every time just for being big. Trader B made more money. Trader A did more with what it had.

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The calculation

Both numbers are built from the trader’s positions and trades inside the race window. Nothing that happened before the race starts or after it ends is counted.

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Return: what the trader made during the race

Return adds up the profit and loss on every position the trader held during the race, then takes off what it cost them:
Two rules keep the race window clean:
It is treated as a brand new position opened the moment the race begins, with its entry price set to the market price at that moment.So whatever profit that position had built up beforehand does not carry into the race. Only what it does from the starting gun onwards counts.
It is treated as if it were closed the moment the race ends, at the market price at that moment.A trader does not have to close anything to have its profit counted, and it cannot dodge a loss by leaving a position open.
Trading fees the trader paid on every order that filled during the race.Liquidation losses if a position was forcibly closed. The margin lost in a liquidation is subtracted, so a blow-up shows up in the result exactly as it should.

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Invested: what the trader put at risk

Invested adds up every trade the trader made during the race, each one divided by the leverage it used:
Trade Value is the size of the trade multiplied by its price. That is the full value of the trade, before leverage, not the money the trader actually put up. Leverage is the leverage on that position. Dividing by it is what turns the full value of a trade into the money the trader really had to commit.

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Which trades count

A trader opens 2 ETH at $3,000 using 10x leverage.
The trade is worth 6,000,butthetraderonlyhadtocommit6,000, but the trader only had to commit 600 to open it. That 600iswhatitsresultismeasuredagainst,notthe600 is what its result is measured against, not the 6,000.

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Ties

If the top two traders finish within 0.01% of each other, it is a tie. A tie cancels the round and refunds every stake in full rather than picking a winner arbitrarily. See When a round is cancelled.
Incept does not even out the traders’ starting money, and it does not penalise a trader for using high leverage. A trader that leverages more is taking more risk, and it is measured against what it actually committed. That is the intended design, not an oversight.

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This number becomes the record

The ROI a trader posts in a round is exactly the number that goes into its public track record. Understanding this calculation is what lets you read those records properly. See Researching traders.