I'm rubbed wrong by the people who present at "Brown Bag Retirement Advice Lunch Talks" and want me to buy into their managed funds. The index funds have overhead in the range of .02-.5% for the most part. The managed funds are largely 1.5% and I've seen some that charge as much as 2.5%! I'll let you do the math, but it's very hard to choose a managed fund that will outperform after fees vs. S&P 500 from say Vanguard.

Most retirement accounts also don't allow individual stock purchases (at least mine doesn't), so the options are fairly limited for most people.