Huh? Perhaps this is one of your "my brain works differently" moments? Cuz most people only set stop loss orders on something they're willing to lose, not keep. Unless you used a more sophisticated type of order, like trailing stop?
Sorry 'bout that, just found some posts I missed.
Remember, I'm a day trader if I feel like it. The trend in AMRN is up with a long term aspect, but it is built on hope and unusual volume. If I initiate a very large day trade I have to choose what kind of stop I use. The volatility of trading is a larger concern, but the direction is not.
In this instance I ran a manual limit trailing stop, because I feared a "blow out the stops" spike down 10 cents from someone with say 10 or 25K who swore that if he ever got even... so he put a sell market order at his buy price and wrote off the investment and was elsewhere when it triggered. And it triggered a cascade of stops down 20 cents.
Dumb way to sell.
So I put a stop limit expecting to trail it up through the day and rebuy if there was an orderly drop through the stop. Whatever took down the price blew through a 10K limit stop 5 cents below the bid so fast it only got 400 shares. It worked really well for me. It was a spike down in an uptrend for the day. A set and forget I'd have used a market order happy to take the consequences...
I saw it happen in ACAD yesterday (this week?). As the stock rose, at xx.30, xx.40 and xx.50 someone dumped enough shares to take the stock down 12-15 cents and wipe out the previous 20 minutes of gains in a second three times.
Sloppy selling.
"I wanted to keep" means through the day and selling by my own volition during the day. Risking a spike down that had legs as well as orderly selling out at my stop rather than higher at the end of the day as I expected.