The drumbeat of bearishness is reaching a crescendo. Scary, attention-grabbing headlines have become the norm in a market overwhelmed by fear after U.S. stocks kicked off 2016 with the worst calendar-year beginning ever. And it isn’t as if 2015’s returns were anything to be cheerful about.

Regular readers on MarketWatch, for example, have been subjected to headlines ranging from it isn’t a good time to buy to the more extreme calls to sell everything.

But for average investors with a retirement account or 401(k) plan, those recommendations aren’t exactly helpful, according to Michael Batnick, who runs financial blog The Irrelevant Investor and is director of research at Ritholtz Wealth Management.

“For a lay person, the ‘sell everything’ type of stories have no value and are pure entertainment and should be taken as such,” Batnick said.

In a recent blog post, Batnick attempts to put the current rout in the market — which he admits may turn deeper — into a historical context, explaining why short-term fluctuations should be ignored.

In a chart, dating back to 1926, Batnick shows annual returns for the S&P 500 SPX, -0.20% and points to three distinct secular bear markets. A secular bear market is a trend when prices fall or move sideways for years or even decades to regain their last peak.

Secular markets are only seen after the fact

As you can see, within secular bear markets there are smaller bull markets or years of positive returns. During the last bear market between 2000 and 2013, nine of the 13 were positive, for example.

“In 2007 a lot of people thought the bear market was over. The problem is that you can see secular bear markets only after the fact,” he said.

The point he makes with that chart is that investors shouldn’t try and time the market and that downturns tend to be followed by swings higher, eventually. With that in mind, an average investor should have a rule-based asset allocation plan, preferably put together before big storms and selloffs, and let the plan do the work in bull and bear markets.

“Market timing only works if you not only make one good call at the top, but also the second good call at the bottom. Over several decades, markets will have multiple corrections, but not many people can make those right calls consistently,” he said, stressing that studies show that investors consistently buy at highs and sell at lows.

“In the long term, stock prices do follow earnings, but in the short term, there is too much noise. Even if you had a crystal ball which said with a 100% certainty what earnings next year would be, nobody has any idea what the multiple is going to be or where the interest rates are going to be—there are so many variables that it’s impossible to predict where the prices will end up,” he continued.

“The only sure way to successfully grow your investments is to have an asset allocation plan that you stick to and continue to contribute over a long period. That way you are buying stocks when they are cheap as well as when they are expensive. And a diversified portfolio will smooth out volatility. The only thing to avoid is to rush and change the plan whenever the market changes,” he said.

For those investors who still would like to time the markets, it would be wise to look at track records of the smartest people. It is far from perfect.