Why do Americans have such a love-hate relationship with the stock market? Despite being proven, time and time again, as one of the best wealth generators in history, U.S. adults grow hot and cold about the market, embracing it as it fills their 401k plans with assets, but shunning and distrusting it at the first sign of risk.

The latter mindset is taking hold right now, according to a brand new survey from Bankrate.com Across all adult age levels, 73% of Americans say they are “not inclined” to invest in the stock market right now. That, despite low interest rates on cash and fixed income, and stock market returns exceeding 30% in 2013, Bankrate points out.

If you think that Americans are growing fickle about stocks because it’s a relative off year for equities, think again. In 2013, when the stock market soared, 76% of Americans said they were largely avoiding stocks, in a similar Bankrate study.

“Americans may be avoiding the buy-high, sell-low habit seen in previous market cycles, but only because they’re not buying at all,” notes Greg McBride, CFA, Bankrate.com’s chief financial analyst. “An overly conservative investment stance compounds the problem that so many Americans have of not saving enough for longer-range goals like retirement.”

I bring the Bankrate study up for a reason. Americans have become much more risk averse after the Great Recession of 2008 and 2009, and the resulting economic malaise that largely continues to this day.

But how did the U.S. population get to a point where all stocks represented a greater savings and investment risk, even to a point where tens of millions of Americans plow money into bank savings vehicles that draw less than a one percent return on their investment?

Warren Buffett is wondering the same thing, touting the stock market in recent media interviews as a better investment than the bond or bank savings market for investors. Buffett puts his money where his mouth is, and his ongoing purchase of IBM (NYSE: IBM) shares serves as a good lesson for risk-averse investors. More on that in a moment, but let’s take a look at how Buffett views stocks, as they relate to investment risk.

Buffett is a classic “slow and steady wins the race” investor, and he habitually seeks to take risk out of the equation with his stock picks. The secret to mitigating risk with stocks, according to The Sage of Omaha, is that there is no secret. “All there is to investing,” he says. “is picking good stocks at good times and staying with them as long as they remain good companies.”

Buffett’s results speak for themselves.  Since 1965, Buffett’s stock picks at Berkshire Hathaway have returned 19.7 percent, compounded annually. In contrast, the Standard & Poor’s 500 has returned 9.7% annually over the same period.

So why doesn’t everyone invest like Buffett? For one thing, very few people can stomach the ups and downs of the market without wanting to jump on and off. For most investors, it is difficult not to panic when the market tanks, and it can be tricky to resist jumping on a really hot stock.

The even-keeled thinking necessary to be a great investor is an extremely rare thing.  Buffett, however, has that trait in spades. He is happy when markets tank because it means he can buy stocks he wants at a cheaper price.

On risky trading, Buffet is very clear – minimize risk.  “There are more people [like hedge-fund managers] that go to bed at night with a hair trigger than ever before,” he says. “It’s an electronic herd, they can give vent to decisions that move billions and billions of dollars with the click of a key. There will be some kind of stampede by that herd.”

“When you have far greater sums than ever before, in one asset class after another, that are held by people who operate on a hair-trigger mechanism, then they lend themselves to more explosive outcomes,” he adds. “People with very short time horizons with huge sums of money, they can all try to head for the exits at the same time. The only way you can leave your seat in burning financial markets is to find someone else to take your seat, and that is not always easy.”

If regular investors mirrored the mindset of Buffett, and they saw risk like he does, maybe they wouldn’t make the mistake of not taking enough risk with their investments, and parking their cash in low-return bank savings vehicles.

Investors could start emulating Buffett with his ongoing affection for IBM. Buffett began snapping up shares of Big Blue in 2011 and has kept buying ever since then – $12.7 billion worth by 2014, and at 68 million shares, IBM comprises 12.8 percent of the Berkshire portfolio. On the surface, it hasn’t been a great pick – IBM’s share growth pales in comparison to the growth in the S&P 500 in the past three years (12.6 percent versus 38.5 percent.)

Still, he “feels good” about IBM, according to an interview last month on CNBC, and likes the long-term trajectory of the company. He sees the company’s ongoing share buyback program as a winner for investors, and he likes the 2.1 percent dividend payout from Big Blue (Buffett is a big believer in dividend payout – Berkshire Hathaway is loaded with blue-chip stocks like IBM, Wells Fargo, and Wal-Mart.

He also knows that IBM is no longer a hardware firm, and has successfully navigated its way to being a software and services firm (87 percent of the company’s revenue comes from those two areas.)

Buffett also sees growth opportunity in key areas like cloud computing, where revenues are growing by 50 percent annually, according to IBM’s third-quarter performance report. That mix of traditional money-makers, like software and service, with new ones like cloud computing, is what IBM is all about – always, always, always focusing on long-term profits.

In short, IBM is the perfect low-risk play where Buffett knows he’ll always make money, but without having to worry too much about asset risk in his portfolio.

That’s a good mindset for regular investors – choose those high-value, dividend-paying blue chip stocks that offer good returns, and leave the real speculation to the rest of Wall Street.

It’s a mindset that has worked for over 50 years, and can work for U.S. investors, too – but only if they climb back into the stock market, and leave their fears over extravagant investment risk behind.

Brian O’Connell is an investment analyst at Investing Daily. He has appeared as an expert financial commentator on CNN, NPR, Fox News, Bloomberg, CNBC, C-Span, CBS Radio, and many other media broadcast outlets.