Question: Right after the event, I felt shocked and depressed. I've been engaging in stocks for about a year now but I've never encountered such a big jump in such a short time. What I'm planning to do is just wait for it to rise again, which I'm not sure when. (Well, who is?)

**What should my mindset be?** 

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I understand that there are already lots of questions regarding **When should I sell?** or **Should I set a stop loss?** For me, this question is not 100% about how to protect your money, but it's more of **In extreme cases like this, how should I mentally prepare myself?**

I anticipate that there will be comments/answers like "we can't give advice if we don't know the exact stock in topic" or somewhere along those lines. I want to pre-emptively tackle this and say that this question is not only for my specific current case. I'd prefer answers to be generic for everyone facing the same problem.

Answer: 
Like @chirs, I'm of the opinion that you *might* want to buy more.

I've done this a couple of times, price dropped a bunch, and I said, heck, I bought some last week, and this week I can get twice as much stock for about the same price.

Brought down my average cost per share, and when the company was taken private, I actually didn't lose money - unlike some other people I know, who only bought at one price, watched the drop, and held on awaiting a recovery (which didn't happen in time before the big money swooped in on it).

But to do this, you need to keep cash reserves (that, like @afforess says, you can afford to lose all of) on hand, awaiting buying opportunities. This, too, is a cost - an opportunity cost.
Did you read [Soichiro Honda](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soichiro_Honda)'s biography? He is the founder of [Honda Motor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda).

His plant was destroyed by an earthquake, and then he proceeded to build another factory which, as World War II broke out, was lost again with his money, and many of his friends', but **he started again**.