To give some perspective on the market and how meek it can be most of the time, here's an interesting fact: Javier Estrada, a finance professor at IESE Business School in Barcelona, Spain, has studied the daily returns of the Dow Jones Industrial Average back to 1900. He found that if you took away the10 best days, two-thirds of the cumulative gains produced by the Dow over the past 109 years would disappear. Conversely, had you missed the market's 10 worst days, you would have tripled the actual return of the Dow.

In other words, in 109 years, 20 days have been very influential on the returns for investors. How could anyone possibly guess which ones? No one could. No one did. This study underscores the importance of always being in the market. You can't tell when it will take off. Of course, you won't know when it's going to crash either, but all investors know there are risks to investing. Over the last 109 years, a lot of money has been made by investors who stayed with their investments through the very tough times. Just look at the price chart for the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Over the last century, it has a very positive slope to it.

To further emphasize that the market, most of the time, can be very quiet and very frustrating, here's another reality: from 1965 to 1982 the Dow Jones Industrial Average price level barely moved. It averaged .6% a year during that period. You would have done much better in a savings account. But then in 1982, it took off. From 1983, starting at 1027, it went to 2015, almost doubling in five years. That's an annual return of about 14% a year. Of course for the 10 years between January 1990 and March of 2000, the market skyrocketed, going from 2591 to 10922, an unbelievable 321% increase. Those were the days.

We're not in those days anymore. We're living back on earth. But the point is that the market can do any number of things: be flat for almost two decades, surge ahead beyond anyone's imagination, fall precipitously to levels no one could have guessed. Investing is a rough ride. But for those with the right attitude, a diversified portfolio, and plenty of patience, the rewards can be significant. So can the losses.

The key to survival is to diversify in every asset class, including cash. Keeping a six month supply of cash to cover all expenses has been drilled into every investor for some time. Now we see the wisdom of that. Keeping some money in the stock market is also wise. It's a question of what percentage, based on each investor's tolerance for risk. There's always the chance that any one investment will go out of business so no one stock should hold too much of a portfolio's assets. Other asset classes such as bonds and real estate (which hasn't done well either but should benefit from inflation should it return) need to also be in the mix.

Gold has done well over the last year as investors worry about the future of other asset classes. Keep in mind that gold doesn't earn money, pays no dividend and requires someone else to buy it from you at a higher price for you to make money.

This is just a reminder that investing in stocks makes sense if done in a broader context. It's only one investment. There are several others that have to be part of a balanced portfolio. Keep those above numbers in mind if you're thinking about getting out of the market. It can move dramatically up (and down). In order to benefit from the good days in the market, which are never pre-announced, you need to own stocks and survive the bad ones.

Ted Allrich is the founder of The Online Investor, the founder of Allrich Investment Management LLC, and author of the book Comfort Zone Investing: Build Wealth and Sleep Well at Night. In this weekly column, he offers advice to investors who are just getting started.