As Kristen says, a key benefit of mutual funds is diversification. When you invest in individual stocks your fortunes rise and fall with that particular stock. Mutual funds let you spread out the risk across multiple stocks according to various themes.

I tend to like broad-based index funds, such as a total stock market index or an S&P 500 index. These funds try to mimic the performance of the stock market as a whole. After all, a majority of mutual funds do not outperform the S&P 500, so you'll probably do better with an index fund. When choosing an index fund it is important to look at the fees charged by the index fund. The management of an index fund is largely passive, so there's little justification for the fund manager to charge hefty fees.

As far as the current turmoil in the stock market is concerned, selling the fund now will lock in the losses without any opportunity to benefit from any recovery. When the market is this volatile, techniques like dollar-cost averaging (investing a fixed amount of money every month) are more effective. So I would recommend continuing to invest in the stock market in general. I can't speak to the particular mutual fund you mentioned in particular.