Real Money from here out

I have not kept up with journaling my trades well at all. As of April 1, 2010 all trades taken are real money. I funded my account with Thinkorswim at just above the minimum amount required to trade.

My first 3 trades were losers. Just like all the books said I would and I swore I wouldn't, I closed out early 2 bear call spreads when they went against me a little for small loses that ended up being winners. I closed out 2 puts on HAL and MCD for small loses a couple of days later. Because of these loses and something I learned in one of my market books (up to almost 30 now)I added this rule to my trading: "Only trade in the direction of the trend. " That's fine and dandy until you start looking at charts that are in long term (1 year +) uptrends, intermediate term (2-3 months) uptrends, but short term/immediate (5 - 30 days) downtrends. So, I have to decide what constitutes a trend in my trading rules. A couple of people suggest never taking a bullish trade below the 200 MA or a bearish one above it. That was too conservative for me. I have decided that if there are higher highs and higher lows I can make a bullish trade and a bearish as long as there are lower highs and lower lows. I will play bounces off resistance in a downtrend and bounces off support in an uptrend. As I record my trades on here I will explain my method and it should become much clearer.