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 Nov 2, 2026, closed Nov 2, 2026, in INTRA2.

The trade

Account: INTRA2
Strategy: Noise area
Book: noise
Symbol: QQQ
Asset class: equity
Side: long
Exposure: long
Status: closed
Opened: Nov 2, 2026
Closed: Nov 2, 2026
Quantity: 41
Entry price: 698.99
Exit price: 695.395366
Exit by: signal
Book value at entry: $47,338.40

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: $28,658.59
Exit value: $28,511.21
P&L: −$147.38
Dividends: —
P&L with dividends: —
Costs: $0.57
Net P&L: −$147.95
Return: −0.51%
Of the book: −31.1 bp
R multiple: —
Held: 30.1 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	Nov 2, 2026	10:30 ET	buy	41	41	698.99	699.29	—	−4.3 bp	—	—	long in: 699.29 > band 697.87	8 trigger numbers at 10:30 lb 687.952174155023 px 699.29 ub 697.8655412652913 pos 1 vwap 695.8465421679895 reason long in: 699.29 > band 697.87 symbol QQQ 1 number fills 1
exit	Nov 2, 2026	11:00 ET	sell	41	41	695.395366	695.395	—	−0.0 bp	—	signal	long out: 695.39 < max(band 698.77, VWAP 695.91)	8 trigger numbers at 11:00 lb 687.0543930351615 px 695.395 ub 698.7695893911886 pos 0 vwap 695.9124540597335 reason long out: 695.39 < max(band 698.77, VWAP 695.91) symbol QQQ 1 number fills 1

Orders

Role	Side	Kind	Qty	Limit	Model price	Status	Filled	Average	Sent (ET)	Filled (ET)
entry	buy	market	41	—	699.29	filled	41	698.99	10:30 ET	10:30 ET
exit	sell	market	41	—	695.395	filled	41	695.395366	11:00 ET	11:00 ET

Path while held

Span: 31 minutes
High: 699.38
Low: 695.04
Best point (MFE): +0.06%
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: 699.315 at 10:30 ET
Exit: 695.40 at 11:00 ET
Exit by: —
The rule's day: +0.0%
The rule's trades that day: 3

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: 10:00:04
leverage: 1.2330024859282445
open.note: QQQ: open 695.31, previous close 690.49, leverage 1.23, 41 shares a leg
open.open: 695.31
open.event: open
prev_close: 690.49
open.shares: 41
open.symbol: QQQ
sigma_10:00: 0.0023783541412265258
open.leverage: 1.2330024859282445
open.prev_close: 690.49