Mine have taken a big hit but after today they have rebounded a bit. I have some money to put in and I think I'm going to buy tomorrow morning before it climbs more.
http://money.cnn.com/2008/01/23/markets/markets_0945/index.htm?postversion=2008012316
The impending doom of recession seems a little much for me. People are throwing around the "R" word a little carelessly if you ask me.
Economists define a recession as a period of at least 6 months with recessing economic indicators. We're just about there to make the "official" definition.
Personally, and especially after yesterday's "emergency rate cut" by the fed, I think we're already in a recession. Not that it's the end of the world, I just think things are bad enough to call it what it is already.
It is also my opinion, though, that there is always money to be made in the market, even during a recession. You just have to be more careful with your investments. But your IRA is long term anyway, so it shouldn't matter. I will point out that rate cuts cause inflation and the immediate surge that we're seeing at the late part of yesterday and today is only a response to greater number of dollars now in our economy. The next few weeks will see a lag back to below what it was minus or plus natural market movement (as is always the case). Since I'm calling recession, I'd wait unless you have some other reason to dump more money in. Additionally, it is speculated that the fed will cut rates again when they have their normal meeting in a couple weeks.
I know my IRA's are long term, I just like looking at them regularly. Usually I'm up around 8-10% but today and yesterday I was down around 3%. I plan on purchasing more of a certain mutual fund tomorrow morning before it goes back in the green. Right now I see it as the stocks are on sale so it's time to buy.
The recession is an actual decline in the GDP not just a slow in growth like we are seeing.
By the way, did you see the foreign markets? They fell much further than we did on Tuesday. It seems like the news is always pessimistic about the market.
We experienced slow job growth 2 quarters ago, a reduction in jobs last quarter, and this quarter isn't panning out too great. Jobs, when referenced in the short term like this, are a measure of GDP. All EI's are pointing to recession, it's the amount of time that is the only thing preventing everyone from admitting it.
Again, this isn't a doom and gloom thing, it happens. It's a side effect of a fiat system, it's simply impossible to continually grow when an economy is centrally planned. The magnitude of this recession will be a direct result of inflation created by Greenspan and Bernanke (the worst times were at the behest of funding a war, so we can blame that too).
Just look at market trends in the past 6 months. It's spikes up from inflationary monetary policy followed by downward swings resulting in an overall downward movement. It's difficult to measure unemployment mid-quarter, but just read the WSJ for a week or two and you'll see lots of job cuts...
We'll see in the March eval I guess 
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