I may have misunderstood your question. I thought you were asking if losses from the outright sale of stocks (not part of any retirement account) could be deducted from ordinary income that included income from IRA distributions and the taxable amount of social security. If your losses to date are from a regular brokerage account, what is your concern about deducting losses from within a retirement account?
Perhaps this is one of the questions and answers you found online: <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="
https://ttlc.intuit.com/questions/4234123-is-401k-investment-loss-tax-deductible">https://ttlc.intui...> Since many of the miscellaneous deductions allowed as an itemized deduction prior to the 2018 tax law changes are no longer allowed, I don't know whether this previous answer is still correct for tax year 2018 or not.
