Stock Talk

[Teh One Who Knocks]

You should still be able to sell even if only for $1 or $0.01 through your brokerage. I would if there's no prospect of them bouncing back and you're sick of those stocks sitting there laughing at you (been there)


If you sell them at a loss you can use that loss on your tax return as capital losses, which will benefit you more than holding worthless stocks.

Forgive me if I sound like I'm pandering but it works like this: You buy Stock X for $500 and sell for $1,000. That is a $500 capital gain which you pay tax on. But say that year (or in Canada, over a 3-year time) you also bought Stock Y at $300 and sold it for $100, for a $200 capital loss. That $200 loss from Stock Y would help offset the tax you owe on your $500 capital gain from Stock X. Now the math gets a little complex because of inclusion rates (no idea how those work in the US) so I don't think it's a straight "$500-$200=$300 taxable" calculation, it's a 50% inclusion rate right now in Canada, but it'll still help reduce your taxes.

You also can't actually use a capital loss to deduct from other income (i.e. If you make $50,000 but lose $1000 on the stock market, you don't get to deduct the stock loss from your income tax), but using capital losses against your capital gains from better investments is pretty straightforward.

You can't sell stock from a defunct company