New investor - what to do?

Here's my situation, over the past few years I had ac***ulated
$500,000 in cash which had been parked in a money market account
paying circa 4%.
I don't immediately need access to the cash, am debt free, own my
house, daughter gone thru' school etc. have well funded 401k / 403b
etc. etc.
None the less as I hope to retire in the next 5 years I'm risk adverse
- so after talking to a financial advisor he persuaded me that
municipal bonds would be a good idea.
So on his advice and with his help I put $500k into Federated Stock &
California Muni Fund A SCFAX.  The front end load was $12.5k ie 2.5%.
Now a few months later I'm down my front end load (of course) plus a
further 6%.

I'm now thinking the economy is tanking even more and maybe I should
go back to cash and just put this down to experience.  I clearly
didn't understand the amount of risk I was taking on.


I'm completely new to investing and have little understanding - none
the less I'm willing to learn.

Any advice gratefully received and of course understand that bottom
line it's my decision and that no one can really predict the future !