who is selling ? seems crazy ..., page-23

@ vvg26

A wash sale is when you sell a share for the purpose of recognising a loss only to re-buy it. There are genuine commercial reasons for selling shares including 'the share price is collapsing and you wish to protect capital. Traders sell shares as soon as they go down and recognise the loss immediately and rebuy as soon as the share finds support.

The point I'm getting at is it is not an illegal thing to sell and buy shares as much or as often as you want. The problem starts when you sell a share to recognise a loss for tax purposes (with no visible commercial purpose). For instance: if you sell a share on 30 June to recognise a $5 per share loss and rebuy it on 1 July for the same price (I'm assuming a relatively stable share price) then this is clearly a wash sale.

If you sell a share on 5 January as the price is crashing at $1 and rebuy on 7th when the share has found support at 50 cents then there is a sound commercial reason for the sale (protection of capital) and its unlikely the primary motivation is to gain a tax advantage.