You can lock in a loss whenever you like. There is no time frame. I would not sell for tax reasons. I would sell because there is a better place for my money. Best to avoid selling for a tax loss then buying back the same stock (even if you have reason).

There is certainly no timeframe, however at this time of the financial year (August), tax is far less of a consideration.  What tends to happen is that once we get down to May and June and people start thinking about their capital gains that they will have to pay tax on they often start looking to offload some of the dogs in their portfolio to crystalise paper losses (turn them into real losses) which can then be used to offset their capital gains, thus reducing their tax payable.  However it's never just as simple as that.  There are many other things to consider.  I tend to see tax-loss selling as more of an opportunity to pick up oversold companies at cheap prices, and they often bounce back in July and August when there are far less people trying to sell out of them.  Unless they really are dogs of course, in which case they can just keep falling regardless of which month it is.

Also, on @MadAsALion's point about not selling and then buying a company back, if you do that with the intention of creating a tax loss, it's called a "wash sale" and it's not allowed by the ATO - see here.  However that only applies IF you sell and then buy the same company back, and IF you did that to create a tax loss.  As others have said, you would sell because you've found somewhere better to invest those funds, tax should not be a primary consideration in most situations.  The commentary here is not about doing the tax-loss selling, it's about taking advantage of other people doing it, particularly when there are a lot of people doing it at the same time, as often happens to badly beaten down ("smashed") companies in June.

Hindsight is a handy thing @Storge, but my idea here was to talk about these opportunities BEFORE June 30, then see how they went in July and August.  CSX was one that was mentioned here prior to June 30 by both @Rapstar and @AlphaAngle, and CSX did trade as low as $1.50/share on June 30th (during the day).  They are very illiquid so they do jump around a bit - like today's +19.75% rise (from $1.57 to $1.88) on no news.  However, it probably pays to put that into the context that they were trading at over $7/share in February, less than 6 months ago.  So even after today's almost 20% rise, they're still down -73% over the past 6 months.  I don't hold CSX, but I do hold ZNO, and they have similar charts - all top left to bottom right, the exact opposite of what you want to see.  Both should recover in July and August because both were oversold IMHO in May and June, although much of the damage was done to CSX's SP on March 30th when they gave that trading update and their share price more than halved (fell -55.19% in one day from $4.43 to $1.985).  Both are also COVID beneficiary stocks and should benefit as people realise COVID is NOT behind us yet, with more virulent strains emerging regularly now, some of which may require additional vaccines to be developed because the ones we have now might not work with them, or not as well.  Regardless, both Zoono and CleanSpace make good and differentiated products that have strong positive benefits, and they are both going to be around for a long time to come, it's really just a matter of trying to get our heads around the growth prospects, in terms of how fast they should grow, realistically.  Both had far too much growth already priced in when they were trading at their peaks, and now they have swung to the opposite end.  The truth is likely somewhere in the middle.  

I do not follow CSX closely at all (yet), but I do follow Zoono, because I hold Zoono in RL.  The biggest problem with Zoono is their MD & CEO (who is also the company's founder) Paul Hyslop is a salesman, and his approach to forecasting and performance reporting leaves a lot to be desired.  He keeps changing the focus and the performance metrics, so it's easy to see why the insto's don't want much to do with Zoono.  They want honesty and truth, they want to know what's going on, even when the news is not good, rather than the smoke and mirrors approach (everything gets positive spin) that we've been getting from Mr. Hyslop.  A lot of private companies that IPO and become public companies struggle with the reporting and compliance requirements of being an ASX-listed company, as well as with the level of additional scrutiny they are under as a public company rather than a private one.  The best public companies set realistic expectations by making conservative forecasts, and then they beat them.  Zoono unfortunately does the opposite - sets high expectations by making ambitious forecasts, and then says, "but look over here!" when they miss those forecasts.  Don't get me wrong, I like the company, and its products, I just don't like the way they update the market and report.  There is room for improvement there.

Hi @shaven, I do not follow TMR, as they are a tiny $17m NT copper explorer who have pivoted to gold/copper exploration in Ecuador (South America) and British Columbia (Canada, North America).  They have had some drilling success and there is plenty of nearology there as well, which is a tongue-in-cheek way of saying that they are inferring that they have great tenements based on their proximity to succesful mining operations owned by other companies, i.e. they have good land because they are close to great land.

I have seen it all before.  They might make it to the big time but the odds are certainly stacked against them.  The majority of companies in their position eventually go broke.  Some get taken out by a bigger player if they find enough gold, and that could be positive for shareholders but that also depends on how much the shareholders have been diluted by capital raisings before the takeover happens.  Takeovers are usually priced at a premium to the last traded price, but not necessarily a premium to the price you've paid for those shares, especially if some years have passed between the two events.  Remember that companies that are explorers or project developers do not usually have any income except from capital raisings or from selling assets, and they still have plenty of bills to pay, including their directors' fees and employee wages/executive salaries, drilling costs, tenement maintenance and fees, ASX listing fees and compliance costs, and plenty more.  The more they drill, the more it costs them, so you'd want to be very confident to go the journey with such a company.  There are hundreds of these companies, and the vast majority do not ever make money from mining anything - that's the sad truth of it.  This one might be that one in 20 or 30 that does well, but I don't see anything that would make me think that they are. 

I do not recognise the names of their board members.  Their Chairman is an ex-investment banker (with Citigroup), who also worked for Ivanhoe Mines subsidiary SouthGobi Resources and in the uranium industry.  He is also the Chairman of Argosy Minerals (AGY) - who are focussed on lithium.  Another director has previously worked for Rio Tinto, Kennecott Australia, Freeport McMoran Indonesia, Union Carbide, Norilsk Nickel and Ivanhoe Mines.  Another one worked for Yamana Gold (in administration) and Itafos, who are described as a US and Brazilian focused vertically integrated phosphate miner and fertilizer producer. 

Another director, JONATHAN SHELLABEAR, does have some relevant gold industry experience, "...having worked as a geologist, resources analyst, corporate executive and investment banker with NM Rothschild & Sons, Deutsche Bank and Resource Finance Corporation. Mr. Shellabear was previously the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Dominion Mining Limited, which was acquired by Kingsgate Consolidated Ltd in February 2011 to create, at that time, the second largest Australian listed gold company by market capitalisation. He has also held senior corporate roles with Portman Limited (now Cliffs Natural Resources) as General Manager, Business Development and Heron Resources as Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer. Most recently, he served as Chief Financial Officer of Capricorn Metals Limited. Mr. Shellabear has extensive capital markets and advisory experience and has advised on numerous public market transactions to companies. Furthermore, he is an accomplished and respected gold industry senior executive with extensive knowledge across technical, commercial and financial disciplines."  

Sounds OK, but have a look at the 10-year (or preferably longer) chart of HRR (Heron Resources) where Jono was the MD & CEO up until 11-Oct-2012.  Not pretty at all.  Also, during his time as CFO of CMM (Capricorn Metals) for three years up until 08-Mar-2019, the SP of CMM dropped -47% from 72 cps to 38 cps.  I can't say too much about Dominion Mining except that the company that bought it, Kingsgate (KCN) peaked at $11.04/share in September 2010 and are now trading at 82.5 cps (cents per share).  In KCN's case however, the majority of that decline is to do with the demise of their Chatree gold mine in Thailand, not the Challenger gold mine that came with the Dominion Mining acquisition.  Kingsgate took over Challenger from Dominion in 2011, sold it to WPG Resources in 2015, and WPG appointed voluntary administrators, then receivers and managers in July and August 2018, which resulted in mining being stopped and the mine being put on care and maintenance (i.e. it was mothballed).

I would summarise that by saying that while these guys have impressive CV's at first glance, digging a little deeper reveals little in the way of track records of value creation in gold mining, with the exception of Jon Shellabear's Dominion Mining run up until 2011, i.e. 10 years ago.  However they have a 5 member board, probably a little too many for a $17m explorer and wanna-be-developer.  They spent $95.9K on Directors and employees benefits during the March 2021 quarter.  Their total expenses came to $723K of which their biggest expense was $314K on advertising and marketing!  What?!  Their total loss for the quarter, after allowing for foreign exchange adjustments was $720K.  And they finished that quarter with less than $1m in the bank.  Little wonder they raised $1.9m in May, which was via a placement - so diluted ordinary retail investors.  On 25-Jun-2021 they also informed the ASX that they intended to issue another 1,232,000 shares in August as "Consideration for public relation services".  Not sure why all this public relations, advertising and marketing needs to be done, seeing as they are not mining anything yet.  Perhaps it's all just to try to raise their profile so they can raise even more money.

I know I sound cynical, but that's just because I've lost plenty of money on companies like this myself when I was younger and not as experienced as I am now.  Anyway, hope they turn out well for you @shaven, but they're not for me.  And I dislike the BNPL industry myself, so am not interested in Zip (Z1P) - but click here and you'll find plenty of content on them.

[posted on 06-July-2021]