How do I get rid of bad stocks if the revenue is less than the commission?

I purchased a few stocks a while back and they are now too cheap to sell. Their value is so small that my online broker will not allow me to sell them, since the revenue would not cover commissions. Is there a way to get these off of my portfolio?

Related Blogs


This entry was posted on Sunday, August 29th, 2010 at 10:53 pm and is filed under stocks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

8 Responses to “How do I get rid of bad stocks if the revenue is less than the commission?”

  1. d’no

  2. Sell it.

  3. Nothingusefullearnedinschool on August 29th, 2010 at 11:57 pm

    Well, the easiest way is to just let them become worthless.
    Perhaps you can write them off on your 1040?

  4. Call the broker. They can sell them off for you and not charge you. I did this a few years ago.

  5. If there is still even a market in them you can surrender them to the broker. Broker will remove them from your account and issue you the equivelant of a confirmation that you can use to show 0$ received and claim the loss on your taxes.

    If there is no market in the stock they issue a “no Bid” letter. Broker removes stock from your account and you claim loss on your taxes.

  6. The best answer is a “thinking outside of the box” type of situation.

    You should donate your shares to a worthy charity. You still get to write off your loss (purchase price minus fair market at time of donation), PLUS you won’t have to pay to have them sold.

    Not only that, but you get a deduction for the donation itself.

    It works out pretty well all around!

  7. You could also choose to keep the stock if the fundamentals are still good.

    More often than not its some stupid stock that you have just a few shares of and you’re tired of seeing it in your portfolio so you want to get rid of it. It might be better to just hold them. You can always do what the posters above mentioned if you do decide to get rid of it.

  8. Maybe you can donate them to some unsuspecting charity.

Leave a Reply