Keep calm and carry on! The popular mantra associated with the British government during World War II may be sage advice for stock investors in the wake of market carnage wrought by the U.K.’s vote to secede from the European Union.

Over the past two sessions, European stocks, specifically the Stoxx Europe 600 SXXP, -0.66% have been hammered. The FTSE 100 UKX, -0.70% closed down 2.5% on Monday, following a 3.2% fall Friday and the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, -0.87% has tumbled nearly 900 points over past two trading days.

Check out: The U.K. votes for Brexit: A recap of the EU referendum action, as it happened

Also:British pound could hit history-making dollar parity by end of 2016

Against that backdrop, investors shouldn’t be faulted for shunning risk amid worries about the aftermath of the U.K.’s Brexit, or British exit from the EU. Fear is building that the monumental decision could lead to a splintering of the fragile European trading bloc. The drop in the British pound offered the clearest picture of how investors feel, at one point Friday falling below $1.32—sterling’s lowest level in 31 years.

Read: George Soros looks set to make a killing on Brexit result

However, Michael Batnick, director of research at Ritholtz Wealth Management and author of the financial blog The Irrelevant Investor, urged calm, pointing to other periods of crisis to show how a balanced portfolio might perform in the years afterward.

The chart shows that a diversified allocation of stocks and bonds was up 21% the year after the 1987 stock-market crash and up a whopping 61% five years later.

A year after Lehman’s bankruptcy, an average investor’s holdings would have posted a 7% return and advanced 43% half a decade later.

“I have absolutely no idea what the implications will be, but I’m pretty confident that it is no more significant than any of the six events (shown in the chart),” he wrote in his blog Friday.

Put simply, Batnick’s point is stay calm and invest. He went on to say:

This is definitely not a market call, I am not suggesting the bottom is in, but I also know not to look a gift horse in the mouth. When an entire index falls ten percent in a day, you hold your nose and hit the buy button. Investing is all about giving your future self a chance at a better life, and it’s days like today that determine whether or not you’ll be able to do so via the stock market.

To be sure, these are scary time for investors. The risk of losing boatloads of money looms large, but Batnick’s point is that long-term investing can pay off and that individual investors ought to think twice before opting to jump out of stocks.

This story was first published on June 24, 2016.