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.

Trade

QQQ · Noise area

Opened Oct 20, 2026, closed Oct 20, 2026, in INTRA2.

The trade

Account: INTRA2
Strategy: Noise area
Book: noise
Symbol: QQQ
Asset class: equity
Side: long
Exposure: long
Status: closed
Opened: Oct 20, 2026
Closed: Oct 20, 2026
Quantity: 60
Entry price: 722.106666
Exit price: 719.052667
Exit by: signal
Book value at entry: $47,832.69

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.

Result

Entry value: $43,326.40
Exit value: $43,143.16
P&L: −$183.24
Dividends: —
P&L with dividends: —
Costs: $0.84
Net P&L: −$184.08
Return: −0.42%
Of the book: −38.3 bp
R multiple: —
Held: 60.2 minutes

Entry and exit

Role	Date	At (ET)	Side	Qty	Asked	Price	Rule's price	Close	Slippage	Against the close	How	Why	The rule's numbers
entry	Oct 20, 2026	10:30 ET	buy	60	60	722.106666	721.93	—	+2.4 bp	—	—	long in: 721.93 > band 720.96	8 trigger numbers at 10:30 lb 712.6841952157113 px 721.93 ub 720.9569755824257 pos 1 vwap 715.997440568766 reason long in: 721.93 > band 720.96 symbol QQQ 1 number fills 1
exit	Oct 20, 2026	11:30 ET	sell	60	60	719.052667	719.29	—	+3.3 bp	—	signal	long out: 719.29 < max(band 721.63, VWAP 717.78)	8 trigger numbers at 11:30 lb 712.0149069368028 px 719.29 ub 721.629155218139 pos 0 vwap 717.7786105237125 reason long out: 719.29 < max(band 721.63, VWAP 717.78) symbol QQQ 1 number fills 1

Orders

Role	Side	Kind	Qty	Limit	Model price	Status	Filled	Average	Sent (ET)	Filled (ET)
entry	buy	market	60	—	721.93	filled	60	722.106666	10:30 ET	10:30 ET
exit	sell	market	60	—	719.29	filled	60	719.052667	11:30 ET	11:30 ET

Path while held

Span: 61 minutes
High: 722.7465
Low: 717.61
Best point (MFE): +0.09%
Worst point (MAE): −0.62%
Bars from: SIP 1-minute bars

The rule's own trade

The rule replayed on its own bars, beside the account's fills.

Matched the account: yes
Entry: 722.11 at 10:30 ET
Exit: 719.03 at 11:30 ET
Exit by: —
The rule's day: −0.4%
The rule's trades that day: 3

side: 1
symbol: QQQ
exit_min: 690
entry_min: 630

Notes

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

inputs

open.at: 10:00:06
leverage: 1.8039318152716053
open.note: QQQ: open 715.27, previous close 718.36, leverage 1.80, 60 shares a leg
open.open: 715.27
open.event: open
prev_close: 718.36
open.shares: 60
open.symbol: QQQ
sigma_10:00: 0.002782055257057492
open.leverage: 1.8039318152716053
open.prev_close: 718.36