How many trades were executed in the testing phase? And, what timframe do you use to place the trades?
That's a fair question.
I did not keep statistics in exactly the way you asked the question. And I don't have quick access to the computer that contains my research report.
This should give you an idea of what happens. And we can come up with some estimates of the statistics your requested.
In my strategy, a credit spread lives for at most 59 days. They are placed on the Monday following the expiration of the previous series. It is rare that at least one side (PUT, CALL) will not meet the risk/reward requirements. This can happen in very volatile markets. In trending markets only one side is likely to be placed at the T-59 day. However, once one side is placed, one can be a little more liberal about placing the other side because no additional margin is required. It is rare that the second side cannot be placed within a week or so.
In a sideways market, this spread or combination of spreads called an Iron Condor dies piecefully at it's expiration day and I keep the credit I received when I entered the trade. If the market moves close to one side or the other, I will close that spread early to avoid market gap risk.
In a trending market, the spread on the far side can be rolled. I've done up to three rolls during live trading under these circumstances.
Lastly, I tested only using options on the RUT. When I got the idea to teach, I added NDX and SPX to my live trading so that my students could relate to whatever size trading account they had. So the 29 spreads in a little over 3 months is an unusually high number of trades if you stick to only one index. Also, I did not do weeklies or quarterlies during the backtesting and paper trading phases. So again, 29 in 3 months is an unusually high rate. However, so much the better for my statistical case.
OK, now with that background, we are talking about 65 months of trading. In a sideways market where both sides can be placed without difficulty, you would expect to place two trades per month and have modest management requirements. Since trending typically happens 20% of the time.
Bottom line, I estimate that I've done a combined 190 to 200 credit spreads when I include the past 3 months live trading.
I have added one key rule that I use in real trading that I did not use in testing. In the near future (3 months or so) I intend rerunning my tests to incorporate this new rule and include all three indexes and the weeklies and quarterlies where available. That should at least triple the number of spreads tracked.
I hope that answers you questions. I'm sure you wont hesitate to ask for additional information where needed.