to Joe Mecane of Citadel. This is up from 10 percent in 2019 and is a result of lower barriers to entry for casual traders, including a strategy by many brokerages to eliminate trading fees. While the wash sale rule is meant to prevent taxpayers from taking advantage of stock losses, it is easily overlooked by many newbie investors. With so many more new traders using platforms like Robinhood,“could pose a problem for novices who spent 2020 trading in and out of the same few stocks.
While you can’t use the loss to offset gains in a given year, the loss gets added to the cost basis of the new investment you made. “In the long run, there may be an upside to a higher cost basis—you may be able to realize a bigger loss when you sell your new investment or, if it goes up and you sell, you may owe less on the gain,”
Fidelity. However, given that you cannot offset a realized gain in a specific year, you would still need to cough up money to cover taxes; for the Robinhood investor, that means $800,000.Robinhood, one of the most popular investing apps and a pioneer in free trades, has captured the limelight several times in the past year. Most recently, it was the platform of choice for traders following the WallStreetBets message board on Reddit to drive up the price of GameStop.
Its user experience has also led to criticism. “Technology can make investing easy and fun. It can also downplay risk in ways that may lead novices astray,”Jason Zweig, author of The Intelligent Investor column at The Wall Street Journal. “Robinhood may encourage risky behaviors that could backfire,” he added.
Being blindsided by a humongous tax bill is one thing, but Robinhood’s gamified approach has also led to tragic outcomes, like the case of Alexander E. Kearns. The 20-year-old student at the University of Nebraska died by suicide afterWruk, the financial planner, thinks ignorance of important regulations “may be the next way in what is to come with these DIY traders.
I saw this a few times in 2000, 2001. People made a fortune in market one year, crashed 1st few months in 2000/2001/2002, and could take the losses in next year to offset gains of the year before.
Unless the trader held it in the long rub then the trader has more than $8-9 million. Or if held short term, then the payout would still be six-figures.
Oops