Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. The response format is open.

Hypothetical: can taxes ever cause a net loss on otherwise-profitable stocks?
You have a sequence of questions here, so a sequence of answers: If you stopped at the point where you had multiple wins with a net profit of $72, then you would pay regular income tax on that $72. It's a short term capital gain, which does not get special tax treatment, and the fact that you made it on multiple transactions does not matter. When you enter your next transaction that takes the hypothetical loss the question gets more complicated. In either case, you are paying a percentage on net gains.  If you took a two year view in the second case and you don't have anything to offset your loss in the second year, then I guess you could say that you paid more tax than you won in the total sequence of trades over the two years. Although you picked a sequence of trades where it does not appear to play, if you're going to pursue this type of strategy then you are likely at some point to run into a case where the "wash sale" rules apply, so you should be aware of that.  You can find information on this elsewhere on this site and also, for example, here: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/understanding-the-wash-sale-rules-2015-03-02  Basically these rules require you to defer recording a loss under some circumstances where you have rapid wins and losses on "substantially identical" securities. EDIT A slight correction, you can take part of your losses in the second year even if you have no off-setting gain.  From the IRS: If your capital losses exceed your capital gains, the amount of the excess loss that you can claim on line 13 of Form 1040 to lower your income is the lesser of $3,000, ($1,500 if you are married filing separately)