Success Story: Dean and Scott Jackson
By Dave Mabe
I recently received an email from MabeKit users Dean Jackson and his son Scott a few days ago.
We finally started trading live on Monday this week. Every day has been green so far. I know there will be some down days in my future but I like the way it has started. You have been very helpful - amazing, in fact.
Pretty awesome start to their live trading, so we jumped on a call so I could learn more.
Here's an edited version of our conversation (shared with permission).
Dave:
Tell me about when you first started this process.
Dean:
When we first got acquainted with you, my son and I started trying to build an automated trading system. I don’t have any programming skills, so my son handled that side while I focused more on the trading and strategy ideas.
It took us a bit of time because Scott has a full-time job, so time was limited. But eventually, we got a few strategies built and backtested in AmiBroker.
Last week, we finally went live.
We started small with just a couple of strategies and very small risk. Monday and Tuesday were green. Then we added more strategies and increased the size a bit on Wednesday and Thursday, and had two really good days.
We’ve already had some losing days, too, but overall things have been very positive.
Dave:
What part of the process took the most time?
Scott:
Getting the strategy ideas coded and getting the backtests working properly was the bottleneck.
Using the Cruncher to improve the strategies actually wasn’t the slow part.
Once I could get a basic strategy to beat commissions before optimization, I usually knew there was something workable there. Then the Cruncher and filters would often push the profit factor up into the 1.6 to 2.0 range while still keeping enough trades to matter.
What surprised me most is that these aren’t complicated strategies. They’re simple patterns and crossovers - very normal trading concepts.
The edge mostly came from the filters in the MabeKit Library and the process.
Dave:
So you didn't have to discover some "holy grail" type strategy?
Scott:
Not at all.
Most of the ideas came from trading concepts Dad found while researching and reading different trading material. I’d just pick ideas that looked easy enough to code and test them.
About half the ideas didn’t work very well.
But now that we’ve built the framework and workflow, testing new ideas is dramatically faster than when we started.
That’s the exciting part.
Dave:
What was one of the hardest parts technically?
Scott:
Understanding the difference between backtesting and live trading.
It sounds simple, but it actually took a while to understand how “current bars” behave in live trading versus backtesting.
We also ran into issues with bad ticks in live data affecting indicators differently than they appeared in end-of-day backtests.
And then there’s the process of making sure the live trades actually match the backtest assumptions.
That took debugging, too.
Dave:
How did it feel once you finally went live?
Dean:
Honestly, it felt great.
We’ve taken around 55 live trades so far, and the results have actually been a little better than the backtests.
That obviously won’t always happen, and we know we could just be running hot right now, but it definitely helps build confidence when you first start.
Dave:
What changed once you got the first working strategies live?
Dean:
The progression from here feels exponentially faster than getting from zero to where we are now.
At the beginning, everything was difficult because we were learning all the moving parts at once.
Now we have a process.
We know how to take an idea, code it, backtest it, optimize it, and move it toward live trading.
That changes everything.
Dave:
What advice would you give someone thinking about automating their trading?
Dean:
I think people underestimate how much work is involved in getting started.
But once you get through that initial phase, things speed up dramatically.
And the collaboration aspect helps a lot too - discussing ideas with other traders, testing concepts together, and refining things over time.
That’s been a huge part of the process for us.
Huge thanks to Dean and Scott for sharing.
I love seeing their persistence start paying off.
-Dave
P.S. Are you in a drawdown and ready to quit? Join the other traders who reversed their drawdowns and are printing money with MabeKit.