Do you know what the wash rule is? The wash rule is a tax rule that prevents you from claiming a loss on a stock if you purchase the same stock back 30 days before or after you sell it. This can really put a crimp in your investment plans if you want to take a loss on a stock, but figure it is primed for a rebound in a week or so. You want the loss, but don’t want to be out of the stock for 30 days becuase you might have to buy it back at a significant increase in cost.
There are a couple of solutions to this problem, none of them perfect, but all worth exploring. If you are wanting to sell a mutual fund in this situation, you can do some additional research and find a fund out there with similar investment makeup and buy that fund instead of the one you just sold. You can also buy back a different stock (say Exxonmobil instead of Conocophilips, or JPMorgan Chase instead of Wells Fargo) if you feel they will behave similarly. If you can’t find a stock that will fit the bill and you have some excess cash, you can buy an additional amount of the stock you want to sell, hold them both 30 days, then sell your original investment. Then you have participated in the uptrend while you were waiting. Maybe you don’t have quite as much loss as you planned, but the point is to make money after all, and if you end up with a profit after the uptrend, hey, that is the plan. If your stock didn’t rebound the way you had hoped, then you still can take your loss, but at least you were fully invested over the whole period.