Somehow, when stock market investors get panicky and start to sell at unusually low prices, large institutions like insurance companies and pension funds always move in to save the market--and pick up a few good bargains at the same time.

Harvard joined that crowd last week, after the Federal Reserve Board announced a new anti-inflation program that set off a Wall Street selling spree.

"This is a very good opportunity for Harvard to get some damn good stocks cheap," says Walter M. Cabot '55, president of Harvard Management Co., the University's private investment manager, which decides how to invest the nation's largest educational endowment.

Cabot says Harvard Management has already begun to shift its portfolio away from bonds and further into the energy and capital goods stocks it has traditionally favored.

And though the purchases so far have not been huge, and will at most mean an increase in stock holdings of roughly 10 per cent, that's a significant move for Harvard's exceptionally prudent money managers--a sign that they believe the Fed's program will help the economy in the long run and revive both the markets and Harvard's latest investments in it