subprime ends with a whimper not a bang, page-9

I sold some stocks but most were stop lossed out. I mean, what do you do in a situation like that that was unexpected? The use of stop losses and where to set their levels is really frustrating for someone like myself who is just starting out in the market for a year or so. Stop losses, when hit always seem to be on the back of unexpeced sharp downward spikes and then the stock quickly recovers (by design?). This happened again last week while I was at work and came home to no stocks in my portfolio and had to buy them all back at higher prices. My cash situation was more or less forced upon me by use of stop losses during that ugly Thursday. There seems to be a lot of info on where to set stop losses but mainly for bigger stocks, not much on speculative stocks. I did buy back some stocks but others I never re-entered again. I think I ended up pretty much even but its scary when you are not sure what is happening and everything moves so fast. I am kind of glad I have experienced this in my first year of trading as it has taught me to keep my eye on other world factors and not concentrate wholy on the stocks I'm holding. I guess trading with my own money and no credit helped.