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: 692.45
Exit price: 690.273333
Exit by: close
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: $33,237.60
Exit value: $33,133.12
P&L: +$104.48
Dividends: —
P&L with dividends: —
Costs: $0.67
Net P&L: +$103.81
Return: +0.31%
Of the book: +22.1 bp
R multiple: —
Held: 208.9 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	12:30 ET	sell	48	48	692.45	692.70	—	+3.6 bp	—	—	short in: 692.70 < band 693.04	8 trigger numbers at 12:30 lb 693.0376833479398 px 692.7 ub 719.6208120851462 pos −1 vwap 695.0656198608531 reason short in: 692.70 < band 693.04 symbol QQQ 1 number fills 1
exit	Oct 30, 2026	15:59 ET	buy	48	48	690.273333	—	690.49	—	−3.1 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 −48 note QQQ: out at market for the close (-48 held) event close_phase 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	—	692.70	filled	48	692.45	12:30 ET	12:30 ET
exit	buy	market	48	—	—	filled	48	690.273333	15:59 ET	15:59 ET

Path while held

Span: 210 minutes
High: 693.17
Low: 683.45
Best point (MFE): +1.30%
Worst point (MAE): −0.10%
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: 692.61 at 12:30 ET
Exit: — at 16:00 ET
Exit by: —
The rule's day: +0.1%
The rule's trades that day: 4

side: −1
symbol: QQQ
exit_min: 960
entry_min: 750

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