Some good advice from the combox...

The mysterious Bill Bannon left this comment in response to my shock and awe when I saw the balance of my Roth IRA.  Can't wait for "Black Monday"  /sarc

Bill bannon has left a new comment on your post "It's Friday...":

Adrienne,

If the market keeps going down, you can stop or slow your aggregate IRA from doing so by buying a short etf which will go up as the market goes down. Thursday my aggregate stayed put all day by doing so but you have to play with them tentatively at first to see their effect.....and you need to have free cash in the ira or sell some stock to get the freed up cash.
MWN does three times the inverse of mid cap stocks. 

So $5,000 does the work of $15,000. If a person had 20k in the market, they could get a market neutral effect (staying put) by putting 15K in stock and 5k in MWN until the down trend is over. What is happening is that your stocks are going down while MWN is going up. And you're kind of staying even. 

The risk is that on a great turn up in the market, you'll also be standing still until you sell MWN.
Research "inverse etf's". You buy them just like a stock. They can counter balance mutual funds also.

 I took Bill's advice and researched "inverse etf's and, by golly, Bill is right.  I know what I'm doing tomorrow.  

Thanks, Bill...