Markets have intrinsic damping - long term traders. If you didn't believe that Accenture was really worth $0.03/share during the flash crash, you could come in

Markets have intrinsic damping - long term traders. If you didn't believe that Accenture was really worth $0.03/share during the flash crash, you could come in and buy it up for cheap, then make a huge profit after the flash crash resolved (in the unlikely event your trades weren't broken [1]). In short, the damping mechanism in markets is that anyone who believes the price is wrong can come in, buy/sell/short and push markets back to the right place. Which is exactly why the flash crash fixed itself. I know a human trader who missed the entire flash crash due to an ill timed bathroom break. [1] US markets will retroactively break "clearly erroneous trades".