QQQ, Oct 16, 2026 · Trading desk

Paper trading, not investment advice. Every account and book on these pages trades paper money: the Alpaca paper accounts DAILY ($1,000,000 from Sep 30, 2026), INTRA1 ($100,000 from Sep 30, 2026) and INTRA2 ($100,000 from Sep 30, 2026); the simulated books SIM-TT ($100,000 from Sep 29, 2026), SIM-V2B ($100,000 from Sep 28, 2026) and SIM-V2B-TOM ($100,000 from Sep 28, 2026), filled at the official close; and market-analysis's ledgers, one contract per position against a $100,000 reporting equity. No real money is at stake. Positions, trades and P&L are published the same day, as the engines record them, with each number's source and cost model labelled. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any security, and nothing is tailored to you. Each strategy is a pre-registered experiment, read once on a date or at a trade count fixed in advance; until then its record says little either way. I may hold or have held positions in securities shown here. Markets can and do lose money.

Account: INTRA2
Strategy: Noise area
Book: noise
Symbol: QQQ
Asset class: equity
Side: short
Exposure: short
Status: closed
Opened: Oct 16, 2026
Closed: Oct 16, 2026
Quantity: 74
Entry price: 720.776081
Exit price: 710.246486
Exit by: close
Book value at entry: $46,683.99

Record Trade journal

Cost model

Alpaca paper fills, with no commission; Alpaca's SEC and CAT fees, charged by the day, are left out. Commission is estimated at $0.007 a share a side, the rate at the owner's own broker: the net P&L is the P&L less it; the P&L, the return, the P&L in basis points of the book and the R multiple are before it. The rule book's day return is the rule's own replay on SIP bars, after the research's own costs: $0.0035 a share a side in commission for the noise area and $0.007 for the other rules, and a cent a share of slippage on every fill except a resting limit order's and the noise area's exit at the close.

Entry value: $53,337.43
Exit value: $52,558.24
P&L: +$779.19
Dividends: —
P&L with dividends: —
Costs: $1.04
Net P&L: +$778.15
Return: +1.46%
Of the book: +166.9 bp
R multiple: —
Held: 358.9 minutes

Role	Date	At (ET)	Side	Qty	Asked	Price	Rule's price	Close	Slippage	Against the close	How	Why	The rule's numbers
entry	Oct 16, 2026	10:00 ET	sell	74	74	720.776081	720.71	—	−0.9 bp	—	—	short in: 720.71 < band 723.67	8 trigger numbers at 10:00 lb 723.6747880205496 px 720.71 ub 729.8515193530706 pos −1 vwap 722.567458093725 reason short in: 720.71 < band 723.67 symbol QQQ 1 number fills 1
exit	Oct 16, 2026	15:59 ET	buy	74	74	710.246486	—	709.80	—	+6.3 bp	close	out by a market order sent at 15:59:00, for the rule's exit at the official close	5 trigger numbers at 15:59:00 held −74 note QQQ: out at market for the close (-74 held) event close_phase symbol QQQ 1 number fills 1

Role	Side	Kind	Qty	Limit	Model price	Status	Filled	Average	Sent (ET)	Filled (ET)
entry	sell	market	74	—	720.71	filled	74	720.776081	10:00 ET	10:00 ET
exit	buy	market	74	—	—	filled	74	710.246486	15:59 ET	15:59 ET

Span: 360 minutes
High: 723.59
Low: 707.23
Best point (MFE): +1.88%
Worst point (MAE): −0.39%
Bars from: SIP 1-minute bars

Matched the account: yes
Entry: 720.94 at 10:00 ET
Exit: — at 16:00 ET
Exit by: —
The rule's day: +3.1%
The rule's trades that day: 2

side: −1
symbol: QQQ
exit_min: 960
entry_min: 600

the noise-area rule on SPY and QQQ: checks on the half hour 10:00-15:30, out at the close

inputs

open.at: 10:00:05
leverage: 2.327501473734969
open.note: QQQ: open 725.52, previous close 728.00, leverage 2.33, 74 shares a leg
open.open: 725.52
open.event: open
prev_close: 728
open.shares: 74
open.symbol: QQQ
sigma_10:00: 0.0025432958146575013
open.leverage: 2.327501473734969
open.prev_close: 728

QQQ · Noise area

The trade

Result

Entry and exit

Orders

Path while held

The rule's own trade

Notes