End of year

I've traded with several brokerages and I'm currently with thinkorswim and very happy. Since I started trading with them during January of last year I've made over 550 trades. Most of those are options trades although a couple hundred are currency trades. It's been a long year and I've learned a lot.

I'm not trading any stocks tomorrow but I might trade some currency. Since I'm on break from school and have plenty of time, I'm going to take the opportunity to do an in-depth performance review.

I want to find out what I did right and wrong, what worked and what failed, and how I can improve. It's important to face facts. It's easy to say that I will avoid making the same mistakes. It's a lot harder, and much more important, to see the evidence. Taking an objective look at performance really forces me to deal with the issues that are holding me back.

After doing some quick number-crunching for my December trades I've come to 4 conclusions:

1. Less is more- The number of trades I make is inversely correlated to the amount of money I make. I'm better off sticking to a few good ideas

2. Go for longer trades - Trades I hold for under a week are less successful and less profitable than the ones that I hold for over a week

3. Focus on the big picture- I find the best setups on a daily timeframe

4. Stock is an option- A lot of my trades would be better done as stock trades instead of options trades

Over the next 4 days I'm going to be spending a lot of time in Excel crunching the numbers for the entire year and getting some hard stats.