I currently have a decent amount of money (relatively to my age) invested in a mutual fund that, along with the rest of them, got clobbered late last year. Then, I got enlightened about the Foolish way to invest and want to take charge of my retirement.

A well-known, full-service brokerage house does have an IRA account type that lets me pick the investment vehicles that I want, including stocks, bonds, UIT's, etc. (Woo woo! Looks like the F4 for me!).

My question is this:

Should I rollover my existing IRA into this new IRA account or should I withdraw the money, take the tax hit, and invest it in exactly the same way but not in an IRA account?

The advantage of the latter is liquidity - I can cash it in at any time. However, I pay the penalty (literally). It would seem that I should roll-it-over, but I wanted the opinions of everyone here first.

Comments?