I voted yes, I believe in buy and hold for index funds, but not necessarily for individual stocks and/or managed funds.
I believe that the market is efficient and that trying to beat an index years in and years out is a fools game, so in that respect I still believe that buy and hold is the best strategy for the long term.
With the buy and hold strategy the only way to tame volatility is to set up an appropriate AA from the get-go. To avoid large drops in your portfolio's value, you would have to set up a pretty conservative AA. For example, based on historical returns (ex-2008!), you would have to keep no more than 40% of your portfolio in stocks in order to prevent a 20+% drop in portfolio value in any one year. Look for example at Vanguard Wellesley, with its 40% stock / 60% bond&cash allocation, it's "only" down about 18% YTD.