Thanks for this! I'm just getting to the point where I'm paying off debt and moving small amounts of money into a roth. I also have a traditional IRA from a previous job. It's a big learning process, and I was definitely making the mistake of confusing the two just as you're talking about here.

At the same time, it seems like they are at least correlated. By definition you want to keep your IRA for long term stuff, since you get penalized by early withdrawal. It seems like you could put your Roth anywhere you feel comfortable with, and then whatever's left over goes to the more risky investments. Maybe I'm still confusing them, but it seems like different compartments take more advantage of different investments.