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 30, 2026, closed Oct 30, 2026, in INTRA2.

The trade

Account: INTRA2
Strategy: Noise area
Book: noise
Symbol: QQQ
Asset class: equity
Side: short
Exposure: short
Status: closed
Opened: Oct 30, 2026
Closed: Oct 30, 2026
Quantity: 48
Entry price: 693.9875
Exit price: 696.611667
Exit by: signal
Book value at entry: $47,259.16

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: $33,311.40
Exit value: $33,437.36
P&L: −$125.96
Dividends: —
P&L with dividends: —
Costs: $0.67
Net P&L: −$126.63
Return: −0.38%
Of the book: −26.7 bp
R multiple: —
Held: 30 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 30, 2026	10:30 ET	sell	48	48	693.9875	694.085	—	+1.4 bp	—	—	short in: 694.09 < band 694.64	8 trigger numbers at 10:30 lb 694.6352421659442 px 694.085 ub 717.9817109178202 pos −1 vwap 695.1064728327002 reason short in: 694.09 < band 694.64 symbol QQQ 1 number fills 1
exit	Oct 30, 2026	11:00 ET	buy	48	48	696.611667	696.67	—	−0.8 bp	—	signal	short out: 696.67 > min(band 693.58, VWAP 695.75)	8 trigger numbers at 11:00 lb 693.5754271822584 px 696.67 ub 719.0690849520853 pos 0 vwap 695.7548107568247 reason short out: 696.67 > min(band 693.58, VWAP 695.75) symbol QQQ 1 number fills 1

Orders

Role	Side	Kind	Qty	Limit	Model price	Status	Filled	Average	Sent (ET)	Filled (ET)
entry	sell	market	48	—	694.085	filled	48	693.9875	10:30 ET	10:30 ET
exit	buy	market	48	—	696.67	filled	48	696.611667	11:00 ET	11:00 ET

Path while held

Span: 31 minutes
High: 697.94
Low: 693.89
Best point (MFE): +0.01%
Worst point (MAE): −0.57%
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: 694.09 at 10:30 ET
Exit: 696.65 at 11:00 ET
Exit by: —
The rule's day: +0.1%
The rule's trades that day: 4

side: −1
symbol: QQQ
exit_min: 660
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: 10:00:07
leverage: 1.440406638996574
open.note: QQQ: open 697.21, previous close 715.34, leverage 1.44, 48 shares a leg
open.open: 697.21
open.event: open
prev_close: 715.34
open.shares: 48
open.symbol: QQQ
sigma_10:00: 0.002468342189157472
open.leverage: 1.440406638996574
open.prev_close: 715.34