Shows
2025-08-1849 minLine Your Own PocketsRunning Out of Buying Power - Part 2More discussion on buying power and running out of it might be a good thing.
2025-08-1143 minLine Your Own PocketsRunning Out of Buying Power - A Good Thing?Is running out of buying power... actually good?Here's the graph of buying power mentioned in the episode:Is Running Out of Buying Power A Good Thing?
2025-08-0441 minLine Your Own PocketsDeep vs. Wide: Two Paths to Trading ProfitsHow many trades should your strategy take and how profitable should each one be?There are two distinct approaches to answering this question, and most profitable traders fall into one camp or the other.
2025-07-2838 minLine Your Own PocketsSymbol Lists in Strategies - Yes or No?Should you restrict your strategy to trade a certain list of symbols?In a surprisingly heated debate, Michael and Dave discuss this topic and different reasons for each approach.
2025-07-2149 minLine Your Own PocketsLooking at P&L (Your's or Some Else's) Is ToxicLooking at your P&L while you're trading is toxic. This also applies when looking at someone else's results - perhaps even more so.
2025-07-1436 minLine Your Own PocketsYour Backtest Looks Great - What Could Possibly Go Wrong?Be wary when going from backtest to live trading. You're at peak optimism, and if you're not careful, disappointment awaits.In this episode, we discuss all the ways a live trading can fall short of your backtest and what you can do about it.
2025-07-0752 minLine Your Own PocketsWhen is your Strategy Good Enough?How to get out of backtest world and make the next steps to get your strategy live.
2025-06-3040 minLine Your Own PocketsThe Key to Backtesting: Your Library of ColumnsThe second episode in our series on creating profitable strategies using backtesting.We review:How most traders backtest the wrong wayHow to add columns to your backtestWhat columns make the most senseHow your "library of columns" gets more and more valuable over time
2025-06-2346 minLine Your Own PocketsYou're Probably Backtesting WrongThe first episode in a mini-series on how to create a trading strategy using backtesting.
2025-06-1644 minLine Your Own PocketsHow Real Traders Use AI to TradeWe discuss Dave's recent experience using ChatGPT to create the Strategy Cruncher, a tool for optimizing your trading strategies.Prediction market for who will have the best AI model by the end of the year.
2025-06-0948 minLine Your Own PocketsWhat Metric Should You Be Optimizing For?Every trader has an opinion on what the perfect metric is to evaluate a strategy and to optimize on.We discuss our favorites and why.
2025-06-0247 minLine Your Own PocketsHow Far Back Should Your Backtest Look Good?"If your backtest looks great for the last 3 months, why do you care what it looked like before that?"A trader Dave started coaching recently asked this question. The answer cuts to the core of why most traders give up on a trading strategy and end up quitting trading altogether.The Spurious Correlations website that was mentioned in the podcast.
2025-05-2646 minLine Your Own PocketsWhat to PrioritizeYou've got a lot of ideas, each requiring a certain amount of work. How do you decide what trading ideas are likely to pan out?Improving an existing strategyCreating a new strategyRelated workflow tasksThe ICE Method
2025-05-1948 minLine Your Own PocketsWhy Not Automate Your Trades?We discuss the most common objections traders have to using automation and how to get over the hump.
2025-05-1234 minLine Your Own PocketsLearning From Top PerformersA follow-up on our previous interview with Jared Tendler where we go deeper into:the role of optimism in tradingpoker and tradinglearning from top performers in non-trading fieldsA chart of earnings season:https://www.davemabe.com/earnings-season/
2025-05-0539 minLine Your Own PocketsInterview with Jared TendlerThis week, we interviewed Jared Tendler, a mental coach for traders, poker players, and golfers. Jared has written several books, including The Mental Game of Trading.This was a wide-ranging interview where we discussed:The mental side of systematic tradingHow poker and trading are similar and differentWhat traders can learn from top performers in other fieldsFind more info about Jared on his website: https://jaredtendler.com/
2025-04-2857 minLine Your Own PocketsShould You Turn Off Strategies On Crazy Days?When the market is raging in a way that's far out of the ordinary, should you turn your strategies off? Or let it be business as usual? We discuss the things to consider.
2025-04-2136 minLine Your Own PocketsTurning A Trading Weakness into an AdvantageWe discuss how Dave turned a trader's frustrating bad habit into a positive workflow for creating new trading edge. This is a great case study for the power of a positive mindset and a desire to get better.
2025-04-1439 minLine Your Own PocketsHow To Trade When Everything is MovingYou're trading a strategy - you're comfortable with the number of trades. And then BOOM - one day the entire market is moving and your system generates 10x the number of trades it normally does.How do you react? Michael and I discussed the first time this happened to me and how best to respond to prepare for the next time.
2025-04-0745 minLine Your Own PocketsDo You Chase Trading Perfection?Do you let the quest for perfection get in the way of trading success? It's more common than you might think. We discuss where this tendency comes from and how to let go of it to make progress in your trading."From the surface, every rabbit hole looks like a pile of money." - DaveHere's a link to the book Michael mentioned: Golf Is Not A Game Of PerfectThe Monkey Trap via Robin Hanson.
2025-03-3142 minLine Your Own PocketsMake Trading Real when Things Are Going WellWhen you're trading part-time and doing well, your trading can seem almost like a video game. Here's actionable thing I tell the traders I coach to do that keeps them motivated to improve even when their trading is going great.
2025-03-2424 min2025-03-1734 minLine Your Own PocketsProfitable Traders Keep A JournalIf there's one thing profitable traders do consistently, it's keeping track of their results. Winners keep score! We discuss the do's and don't's of journaling and the things you can safely skip because they're a waste of time.
2025-03-1047 minLine Your Own PocketsWhat NOT To Automate In Your Trading BusinessJust because you CAN automate doesn't necessarily mean you SHOULD automate it.
2025-03-0332 min