===How to protect my position?=== As indicated above options can help, trading rules can help , but overall there are no contraceptives against the market - one will be f@cked, the question is only where, when and how bad.... The only thing trader or investor can do about that is to control size of the position to avoid the force-major to be very painful.
There are two ways to protect your trading position: Hedging and stop losses. Hedging helps you to limit your losses to a point wherein you can reduce your risk in invested instruments. Stop losses is the security of amount invested and when investor is ready to give away some part of his investment as a loss. Once a particular stop price is reached, stop order is entered.