Why I Trade 25 Strategies After 17 Years of Trading

In episode 549 of the Desire To Trade Podcast, you will be listening to an interview with Dave Mabe, who's been trading for more than 20 years, sharing how nearly quitting during a massive drawdown pushed him to rethink everything about how he trades. What started as one working idea turned into 25 fully automated strategies running every day. He also dives into the hardest lesson of his career—trading through a brutal drawdown—and how it forced him to build a system for creating new strategies.

The video is also available for you to watch on YouTube.

Topics Covered In This Episode

00:00 Introduction
00:37 Who is Dave Mabe?
01:06 Fully automated trading vs manual execution
01:40 How Dave started trading
04:04 The problem with learning from intuition-based traders
05:50 Can you really make money with discretionary trading?
06:45 First automated strategy: success or failure?
09:28 Do algo traders struggle with emotions too?
11:09 Is coding required for automated trading in 2026?
12:13 Why backtests look great but live trading fails
15:48 How much variance between backtest and live is acceptable?
16:45 What separates traders who quit from those who last 20 years
19:51 Generating new trading strategies consistently
23:30 Is there a limit to how many strategies you can run?
24:46 Where to find Dave Mabe and his free backtesting course (link below)

What did you like best in this podcast episode? Let's talk in the comments below, or join me in the Facebook group!

Desire To Trade's Top Resources

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Complete Price Action Strategy Checklist
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Desire To TRADE Academy
Get a copy of Prop Trading Secrets (Author: Kathy Lien & Etienne Crete)

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How to find Dave Mabe

Dave's free backtesting course

What one thing will you implement after listening to this podcast episode? Leave a comment below, or join me in the Facebook group!