You can deduct $3,000 a year in captial losses. Any unsed loss can be carried forward indefininely and you can deduct $3,000 every year until it is used up. However, the deduction is for you NET loss.

So if you have $20,000 in dot com losses that you take in 2008 and sell another stock for a $5,000 gain, you will offset the $5K gain with $5K loss from the dot com stocks - plus get another $3,000 loss --thereby using $8,000 of your dot com losses in 2008. The remaining $12K loss can be deducted at $3,000 per year until used up -- or offset by future gains.

You can deduct $3,000 a year in captial losses.

You should be able to get a deduction up to $3000 every year. If this is the case, I recommend hanging onto the stocks for awhile longer. Sell off the required amount needed to get $3000 in tax deductions this year.

Then, do the same in the following years until the money runs out. You'll have a nice steady stream of tax reductions by following this strategy. In a twisted way, you'll end up with this slight return on your investment, instead of a total wipe out by selling at a loss.

Holding onto them for several more years and slowly depleting the pot carries other benefits as well. You just never know how the stocks may act in the future, since no one can predict the market. It's not unreasonable to think that a couple of your investments may pick up. If this is the case, you'll have additional time to monitor their performance and think about whether or not you want to sell to get a tax deduction.