market's been overly volatile in the past few months. The severe drops are triggering alot of automated stop losses causing the prices to drop further causing deeper drops, and the tailwind continues.
Whats sad is 2 major principles that alot of people applied for the longest time to get by in the market are no longer profitable:
1) Buy & Hold for the near long term is a NO GO. If its for the FAR FAR long term, maybe. But you are talking about a very small % of folks who can afford to jail-lock funds into holdings without needing them for extended periods of time (5+ years)
2) Trading ETFs over individual companies to mitigate high risk moves per day. That's no longer viable either. Look at most of the indexes , they move in 3% plus per day. A while back, ETFs would move 0.80% per day at the most. So it was a nice vehicle for low risk trading. No longer the case.
In the end of the day, when you see sectors crash that hard, your best bet is to sit on the sidelines with cash in hand. Let all the stop losses & the fear to play its role. But, you will need to pounce once a bottom or a top has been established. I personally dont try to guess bottoms or tops in the market, i apply the "alligator feeding" principle, meaning watch carefully, apply technical and fundamental analysis, and build your shopping list. Then watch for a confirmation for a solid bottom or a solid top, when its formed (takes usually weeks to form) identify the least risk entrance point & pounce in. Even then, trade with stop losses and/or extreme vigilance in case market manipulation is in play and what you thought was a top or a bottom was really a "head fake" in either direction. If its a head fake, your low risk entrance point should mitigate deep losses in your portfolio, at that point, dont be scared to EXIT the market & sit back on the sidelines again. Rinse & Repeat.
i know ... TOO LONG OF A RESPONSE 
)) its just no short answer these days when it comes to stock market with the automated trading, automated order executions, and the market manipulations.
