That's what a stop loss order does, it gets you out of your position regardless of the price. When P&G was dropping like a stone there was no way to know if the

That's what a stop loss order does, it gets you out of your position regardless of the price. When P&G was dropping like a stone there was no way to know if the market was going to go straight back up or straight down. If it hadn't been a 'flash' crash but a straight up crash, if at that moment North Korea had invaded someone those average investors would be thanking their lucky stars they got out at only a 20% loss. You can't have it both ways, either you set hard limits for your position and take the hit when you guess wrong or you let your position ride and risk losing everything. The crazy prices were busted after the fact anyway so if you had a stop loss further out than 60% of the pre-nonsense price your trade never happened.