Every autumn you need to think about loss harvesting in your non-retirement taxable investment accounts. You can use up to $3,000 per tax year as losses to offset capital gains and this can make a bad invesment into a tax break.
Now if you lost $9,000 on taxable investments in a year you can take up to $3,000 of that and use it over three tax years. Therefore, a really bad investment can help you out for several tax years.
If you still like the investment you lost money in remember to follow the thirty-day wash rule because otherwise use cannot use the tax benefits of that loss.