Put five Fools in a room, ask them how they invest, and you'll likely get five different answers. Some like growth, others value, or small caps, or dividends, or, well, you get the picture.

Yet while our styles differ, we all want excellent, engaged managers running the companies we own. We like it even more when these managers are also owners -- investors like you and me who, in trying times like these, are willing to buy as others sell. That's why I write this column each week.

The week's buying
So which rich executives are buying now? Have a look, courtesy of our friends at Form 4 Oracle:

Company

Closing Price 5/7/09

Total Value Purchased

52-Week Change

Kinder Morgan Management (NYSE:KMR)

$40.75

$818,137

(28.1%)

St. Jude Medical (NYSE:STJ)

$35.10

$497,549

(14.9%)

Verizon (NYSE:VZ)

$29.86

$510,336

(17.4%)

Sources: Fool.com, Yahoo! Finance, Form 4 Oracle.

Verizon rising?
Maybe Verizon Wireless -- a joint venture between Verizon and Vodafone (NYSE:VOD) -- and Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) are closer to a deal than we think? The newswires are flush with quotes from conjecturing analysts who say that the Mac maker must reach beyond AT&T (NYSE:T) in order to grow its iPhone market share.

Many would appear to agree. In December, Antenna Software released a survey of its customers, in which 49% of respondents said the biggest barrier to adoption of the iPhone was the iEmpire's exclusive deal with AT&T, BusinessWeek reports. (Antenna specializes in products for managing mobile devices.)

Verizon Wireless, meanwhile, is profiting from the northward march of Research In Motion (NASDAQ:RIMM). A lower-priced version of RIM's BlackBerry Curve outsold the iPhone in the first quarter. Three of the top four handsets sold in Q1 were BlackBerrys, according to researcher NPD Group.

Show stats like that to our 130,000-strong Motley Fool CAPS community, and they get bullish:

Metric

Verizon

CAPS stars (5 max)

****

Total ratings

3,166

Percent Bulls

94%

Percent Bears

6%

Bullish pitches

521 of 561

Data current as of May 8, 2009.

"Verizon has the best 3G wireless network, and they have for some time now," wrote CAPS All-Star psulion earlier this week, continuing:

As the wireless providers move to LTE in the next few years I expect Verizon to be ahead of the curve in rolling out 4G as well. At some point in the near future the mobile network will be fast enough to stream audio and video in massive amounts, similar to WiFi today - mobile consumers will pay for this bandwidth and the convenience of anywhere access.

Insiders would appear to agree. Verizon Wireless CEO Lowell McAdam yesterday spent more than a half-million dollars to acquire 16,700 new shares of his parent company. There's bullish, and then there's bullish.

There's your update. See you back here next week when we dig through more insider filings in search of the next home run stock.

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