343: How He Automated His Way to 3,500 Trades a Year w/ Dave Mabe

Dave Mabe, systematic trading coach and former CTO of Trade Ideas, shares how he transitioned from discretionary trading to running 25 automated strategies, and the single biggest backtesting mistake most traders make.

Full episode + show notes:

https://tradingnut.com/dave-mabe/

Key moments

- [05:44] Having a full-time job and trading on the side forces you to focus on a small window, preventing you from strategy-hopping.

- [11:53] Discretionary traders can look at situations and figure out when to 'swing the bat hard,' but it is a very difficult skill to master.

- [14:30] My very first backtest of my discretionary strategy actually performed better than my manual execution.

- [18:12] The only thing harder than coming up with your first profitable trading strategy is coming up with your second.

- [19:08] The biggest mistake in backtesting is trying to shoot for the final version of a strategy on your very first run.

- [20:01] Your first backtest should have no filtering; instead, add custom columns for every indicator and optimize using that dataset.

- [27:44] Scale wide by adding more automated trades across smaller timeframes, rather than just increasing your position size.

- [30:54] A good backtesting software must be able to scan the entire US equities market and allow custom columns.