My stomach felt awkward after dinner last night. Then around 2am, I felt like I wanted to vomit. Minutes afterward, my previous meal came gushing out. That was the most awful experience I've ever felt. Even worse than the time when I crashed into a ditch while going down a steep hill on my mountain bike... My throat felt burning from the stomach acid. So being as bright as I am, I drank some milk and some honey water. Not a good idea. First of all, I shouldn't have any dairy or citrus product for the first day according to eMedicineHealth. Secondly, my stomach needed rest before I poured more stuff down. So not too long afterward, I vomitted a second time. By then, it was pretty evident that I have food poisoning. I could barely standup and felt dizzy. I took a sip of water to sooth my throat, researched what I should do online, and just went back to sleep. Geeky, I know. It was faster to just Google it than find the number and consult the 24-hour telehealth line we have here in Canada. But I promised myself that if I vomit a third time, I would go to the hospital. Fortunately, I didn't have to resort to that. The instructions online actually worked. I took a nap and allowed my stomach to rest. Then I gradually drank more and more water and mixed in some soft food to regain my strength. Took me 2 long hours to eat a banana and a bowl of oatmeal plus water. After a few more hours of sleep, I feel much better now. I called in sick at work for today and tomorrow just in case. I'm just going to chill for a day or two. I see that the forex market is making some impressive moves overnight. I couldn't care less at this moment.

RRSP contribution deadline on March 1st is fast approaching. Like most Canadians, this is pretty much the only time when I give myRegistered Retirement Savings Plan some attention. Right now, my RRSP balance stands at \$0. That's right, nothing. I've been putting my money at work for 10 years trading all sorts of markets but willfully ignoring the biggest cost to any trader. Taxes. Now that my marginal tax rate is for the first time running above 30%, and with no tax break in sight, it's time that I take a hard look at my tax strategies to reduce my trading costs. Don't worry, this isn't yet another post about RRSP. (But if you're indeed looking for RRSP information, I point you to a Canadian personal finance blog, MillionDollarJourney) The reason why I haven't placed money into my RRSP is same as why I don't invest in real estates. Which is, a lack of liquidity. As the name suggest, RRSP is for retirement. Here's the problem simplistically put. If I take money out while I'm still working, I get taxed at my full marginal tax rate for those money. Even if they were supposed to be capital gain. Thus I effectively lose my 50% tax discount from my investment capital gain. So money into my RRSP would effectively be locked in while my salary is still my main source of income! I don't have a wad of cash where I can just stash away yet. So that's why my RRSP stands at \$0 this year. Although I am thinking of opening an RRSP soon... But I digressed. The fact is, taxes in Canada is ridiculously high. So I need to do something about it soon. While looking for RRSP information, I came across Questrade's Tax Free Trading Account. It is a reincarnation of the Tax Free Savings Account. As far as I know, Questrade is the only discount broker offering this type of account. Basically, it is a trading account in which there is no income taxes involved and any profit taken out would not count towards annual income too. Sounds too good to be true? Here are 3 limitations for a TFSA trading account.

1. Limit of \$5,000 contribution per year
2. Extra costs for trading the U.S. markets
3. Cash account only, no margin.

I will discuss #2 shortly. But #3 is what matters the most to me as a trader. No margin means no leverage, no shorting, and no futures and forex trading. No shorting?! One-way trading is not a good thing for a trader. This is obviously a ploy to get people to buy, buy, buy. And no forex trading?! Yet, I can't expect to have my cake and eat it too. Yes, this TFSA trading thing has strings attached. But. It's tax-free! That's enough incentive for me to consider incorporating it into my portfolio. Make no mistake, this will not be my primary, or even secondary, trading account. My plan is to use it as an ultra-conservative investment vehicle only. It's about time that I replace my abysmal 1% yield savings account! Beforeopening a Questrade TFSA trading account (affliate link) though, I need to do my homework on Canadian stocks. Because TFSA is a Canadian government offer, trading U.S. markets would incur extra costs (a devious way of "Buy Canadian"). As such, the only cost effective way for me to maximize a TFSA trading account is to trade TSX and TSX Ventures stocks. This is yet another item on my to-do list. Come up with a strategy to trade this account with minimal risks (can't stress this enough)using Canadian stocks. I actually have some ideas already. But I'll save that for another time. In my next series of posts, I ask a fundamental investment question like any trader should. Is a \$5000 Questrade TFSA trading account cost effective? P.S. For more information on Questrade, youngandthrifty.ca offers a review of this discount broker.

One of the frontpage stories in my local newspaper today tells the tale of how a [Deadly crash shattered teacher's life][]. A young couple is left permanently paralyzed for one and crippled for the other. All because of "brazen and aggressive" driving of two other drivers. Alan Kippax was racing with his cousin Peter Kippax on the street. Peter lost control of his Porsche and crashed into the aforementioned young couple's Pontiac. Peter died in the crash and Alan was sentenced to be guilty of his contribution in this tragedy. While this is certainly a sad news, unfortunately, it isn't rare either. And what does it have to do on my trading blog? You see, it is actually the last line of the article that really caught my attention. > Kippax, who used to run an emerald marketing network, Ontario Treasure > Traders International, is global sales manager for Business In Motion. Business In Motion. That rings a bell in my head. Exactly a year ago, [CBC News aired an investigative journal][] on this company. In the show, PSA President Robert L. FitzPatrick concludes: > BIM is a blatant pyramid scam which – by its design > – will inflict losses on 90+% of all consumers who > are ensnared. from Pyramid Scheme Alert Alan Kippax (the one alive) was never charged or questioned in Canada regarding BIM. Even though he was convicted of fraud by the government of England in another pyramid scheme and in lieu of overwhelming evidence against him and BIM here in Canada. It is sad that it takes another tragedy to bring to justice another tragedy. Yet, I find it incredibly just that at least one more financial scam has come to an end, although in an unfortunate manner. As for Kippax. I feel no remorse for him. A loved one dies in his face and he's left alive to bear the consequences of his crime (not to the full extent, but still) in prison. How fitting is that for a scammer? (Yes, I am evil.) My questions are, why are there still so many financial scams out there, right in our backyards, in this so-called information age? Is our government deliberately turning a blind eye or are they really that incompetent? How many more [Madoff cases][] will it take for us to wake up to this problem?

If you are like me that keep a detailed trading journal in a blog or in a computer, then capturing technical analysis charts (assuming you use TA) is an essential historical record of your trades. I was saving my charts in JPG format for many years because that's also what my digital camera used. So I used it without giving much thought. It wasn't until one day when I realized my saved charts were slightly blurry that I gave the issue of image format more thought. After some research, I found out that not all image formats are created equal. Not only do they differ in compression level, they also differ in their quality and intended use. This post is intended to summarize my conclusion about why PNG format is the best for saving stock chart captures. In addition to the popular JPEG image format, I have often seen other technical analyst bloggers use GIF to post their charts. As such, I'll compare the 3 formats in this article. The criteria for judging image format for stock charts are obviously quality and file size. Quality is definitely what matters the most because stock charting relies heavily on the points and lines for comparison and analysis. If you can't figure out the resistance/support, for example, from looking at the image, then that chart couldn't provide you with in-depth analysis later. Which would render it useless for the purpose of reviewing your trades. As for file size, it depends on if you're posting it online. If that the case, then it's arguably as important as the quality of the image. Waiting for images to load is an unnecessary waste of time. Before digging deeper in this topic. I figured that it's best to just present a real case trading journal example. Here's what I did for the figures attached below. I captured a chart of crude oil futures with my trading screen. Moving averages, channels, volume, and a couple more separate indicators. A pretty typical setup. The first image is saved in JPG format. It is 213 KB in size. Click on it to see the full size image. Notice the compression artifacts. In particular, the distorted colours and pixels. You couldn't really make out some lines because it's blurred. The second image is in PNG format. It is only 68 KB in size, a 1/3 of the JPG. You can see that it's perfectly clear and sharp. If you're interested in more explanation, continue reading. But be forewarned that this could get confusing. According to Wikipedia, .PNG images are generally smaller than GIF but bigger than .JPG. However, PNG images produce sharper quality than JPG if all else remain equal. Thus, for a clear technical analysis chart image capture, PNG's file size is smaller than JPG (and GIF) if the quality and resolution (height and width) are the same. That is because PNG (and GIF) uses a lossless compression technique. Meaning that the compressed image looks exactly the same as the original. Whereas JPG uses a lossy compression technique. Meaning the compressed image is merely close enough with the original. JPG would lose out its advantage of smaller file size because it needs to increase the quality (by reducing compression rate) to keep up with the quality of PNG. And why the quality setting needs to be high for charts? Because of the high contrast and non-uniform nature of stock charts. You can rarely guess what a pixel is like from its neighbours. That is why lossless image compression is highly preferred. Out of the commonly supported trading platform export image formats out there, PNG is the best there is. PNG is also widely supported by web browsers and operating systems, so it's almost impossible that you will find a computer that can't read it. In summary, here's a ranking in terms of file size (for the same resolution and quality of image), #1 being the best:

1. PNG
2. GIF
3. JPG

Then a ranking for the quality at the same resolution and file size, #1 being the best:

1. PNG
2. GIF
3. JPG

(Sorry, I couldn't do a table in this blog) Also note that PNG was designed to be an improvement of GIF. So in most cases, PNG beats GIF. Lastly, there's also BMP bitmap format. Some people may use it because it's the default for Windows Paint and some other software. Although, BMP is lossless too, it has no compression at all. For example, the samples below were 213 KB and 68 KB for JPG and PNG, respectively, but the BMP file is 3,319 KB for exactly the same image! Using BMP is a waste of hard drive space for saving stock charts when you can use PNG for the same image quality. [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="580" caption="JPG sample (213 KB)"][]JPG sample (213 KB)[/caption] [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="580" caption="PNG sample (68 KB)"][]PNG sample (68 KB)[/caption]