he is getting a better deal. I still like Countrywide Financial.

How many "yearly highs" do you think Google or Berkshire Hathaway had? That should answer why investment managers invest in those stocks.Countrywide Financial? why woould you want any stock in a company that is almost in bankrupcy?Want a bargain? Go to the Dollar store. Wanna invest in stocks? Buy the ones goin up, not down.

I can't imagine why you like Countrywide right now. I think you'll get burned. Some stocks near their 52 week high are getting ready to break out. They could possibly go much higher. I think i'm with you though. I think its easier to find good companies that have been beaten down. Its worked pretty well so far.*EDIT* I forgot to mention that fund managers are usually limited on what they can buy and their jobs are always on the line. If a fund manager buys Apple and the stock tanks, his constiuents will blame Apple because it was the hot stock at the time. If he buys another company that has been dropping, and it continues to drop, they will blame the manager.

Because most investment managers have to buy certain stocks in order to match the benchmarks they are indexed to. If for example one particular fund is indexed to the S&P500 index and volatile stocks such as Google (GOOG), Exxon (XOM) or Apple (APPL) are contained in this index and in order to at least earn a return to match the benchmark they are forced to buy into these shares regardless if they wanted to or not. If investment managers do not at least return the average return to their benchmark then they will likely be out of a job.I would also caution comparing the individual investor to the professional money manager because the tasks at hand are very different. Most of the professionals have the tolerance to take some risk here and there. If they see Google taking off and they don't agree with that stock then they will underweight their holdings compared to the benchmark holdings S&P has in their weighting. The professionals add their value by under weighting and overweighting in stocks they deem appropriate . As an individual investor we obviously look at the investments differently because we are in it for the long term and we see the trends for the long haul versus the active portfolio management of today which is more concerned about the short-term return.In a nutshell professional money managers have to buy whereas the individuals can play the waiting game when good deals come around.