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 21, 2026, closed Oct 21, 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 21, 2026
Closed: Oct 21, 2026
Quantity: 59
Entry price: 726.799661
Exit price: 726.493051
Exit by: signal
Book value at entry: $47,656.78

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: $42,881.18
Exit value: $42,863.09
P&L: −$18.09
Dividends: —
P&L with dividends: —
Costs: $0.83
Net P&L: −$18.92
Return: −0.04%
Of the book: −3.8 bp
R multiple: —
Held: 60 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 21, 2026	13:00 ET	buy	59	59	726.799661	726.91	—	−1.5 bp	—	—	long in: 726.91 > band 725.91	8 trigger numbers at 13:00 lb 713.9420981779824 px 726.91 ub 725.9113870599907 pos 1 vwap 723.7132823546959 reason long in: 726.91 > band 725.91 symbol QQQ 1 number fills 1
exit	Oct 21, 2026	14:00 ET	sell	59	59	726.493051	726.46	—	−0.5 bp	—	signal	long out: 726.46 < max(band 726.62, VWAP 724.16)	8 trigger numbers at 14:00 lb 713.2385269796982 px 726.46 ub 726.6194387292364 pos 0 vwap 724.1644120221266 reason long out: 726.46 < max(band 726.62, VWAP 724.16) symbol QQQ 1 number fills 1

Orders

Role	Side	Kind	Qty	Limit	Model price	Status	Filled	Average	Sent (ET)	Filled (ET)
entry	buy	market	59	—	726.91	filled	59	726.799661	13:00 ET	13:00 ET
exit	sell	market	59	—	726.46	filled	59	726.493051	14:00 ET	14:00 ET

Path while held

Span: 61 minutes
High: 727.95
Low: 726.32
Best point (MFE): +0.16%
Worst point (MAE): −0.07%
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: 726.885 at 13:00 ET
Exit: 726.43 at 14:00 ET
Exit by: —
The rule's day: −1.0%
The rule's trades that day: 4

side: 1
symbol: QQQ
exit_min: 840
entry_min: 780

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: 1.814824353501948
open.note: QQQ: open 722.20, previous close 717.63, leverage 1.81, 59 shares a leg
open.open: 722.2
open.event: open
prev_close: 717.63
open.shares: 59
open.symbol: QQQ
sigma_10:00: 0.002542428249385688
open.leverage: 1.814824353501948
open.prev_close: 717.63