(MONEY Magazine) – Trapeze artists and retirees have this in common: proper planning can mean everything when it comes time to let go. But retirees face the more frightening prospect. They must execute their daring transition to a new life without any assurance that their financial safety net will be big enough to meet their needs. It's not surprising, then, that in the current climate of corporate restructuring and downsizing, retirement planning skills fetch a high premium. The reigning investment specialist in this field is probably San Francisco superbroker Andrew Cooper III. Four months ago, Cooper packed up his 2,000- client Rolodex at Dean Witter Reynolds and, for an undisclosed but undoubtedly dazzling inducement, walked it -- along with 25 brokers on his staff -- 10 blocks across town to Shearson Lehman Hutton. There he now heads the Cooper Network, a group of 50 Shearson brokers in 25 cities who specialize in deploying Cooper's own investment strategies for employees of large corporations who face normal or early retirement. In putting together a portfolio for his just-retired clients -- usually executives with accounts averaging $300,000 -- Cooper tries to generate a comfortable income for the retiree by investing funds accumulated in company pension, profit-sharing and stock-bonus plans. ''The first decision,'' says Cooper, ''is a tax decision.'' That's because a retiree who receives a distribution from a tax-deferred plan has 60 days to deposit the money in an Individual Retirement Account or be taxed on the withdrawal. Therefore, Cooper invariably advises his clients to invest under the tax-sheltered umbrella of a rollover IRA. Cooper does not charge for the extensive financial plan he works up for every client, detailing the strategy by which the retiree can re-create a stream of income from his assets. Instead, the customer pays the standard brokerage fees for the transactions, which typically amount to 1.5% of the assets under management to start and about 0.5% annually thereafter. ''These accounts see little velocity,'' he says. ''We basically buy and hold.'' Cooper sticks with the same conservative investment formula for all of his clients, though he tinkers slightly with the exact allocation of assets within the IRA depending on the size of the distribution, the retiree's age and future income requirements, and current market conditions. In 1988 he hopes to provide his clients with at least a 9% return on their investments. He usually prescribes four or five fixed-income securities as the major component of the portfolio, with the remainder, about 10% currently, going to stocks and income-oriented real estate limited partnerships. ''It's boring as hell,'' says Cooper, ''but our emphasis is on safety.'' The anchor of a typical Cooper Network portfolio is usually a 35% investment in high-income Ginnie Maes, mortgage-backed securities guaranteed by the Government National Mortgage Association. He puts another 10% of his clients' money in mortgage-backed certificates guaranteed by the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, commonly known as Freddie Mac. Says Cooper: ''Like Treasury bonds, Ginnie Maes and Freddie Macs are direct obligations of the U.S. government, but unlike Treasuries, they pay you both interest and some principal each month. So if interest rates go up, you can reinvest more of your money at the higher rate.'' Cooper staggers the maturities of the securities -- and advises that they be held to term in the client's name in a Shearson account. To hedge against the risk that interest rates will fall instead of rise, Cooper encourages clients to invest in zero-coupon Treasuries called STRIPS (separate trading of registered interest and principal of securities). A typical one costing $600 pays back $1,000 when it matures six years later. ''When interest rates tumble, zeros go up in value quicker than other bonds because their yield to maturity is locked in,'' he explains. Right now, however, he is fearful of a rise in interest rates, so he is paring back his usual recommendation of a 10% commitment to Treasury zeros. Cooper advises his clients to put another 10% to 15% of their money in Treasury bonds. Rather than buying these bonds outright, he prefers to invest through so-called enhanced-government bond mutual funds, which boost returns on the Treasuries by selling options on them. ''These are probably our highest-yielding investments,'' says Cooper. Currently such funds yield 10.5% to 11.5%. To round out the fixed-income portion of the portfolio, Cooper favors putting another 25% in certificates of deposit of one- to four-year maturities, recently yielding 7.2% to 8.3%. Reason: their short maturities would allow him to quickly reinvest the principal in higher-yielding CDs should interest rates rise. He then adds a small equity investment -- usually less than 10% of the portfolio and often composed of stock from the retiree's company -- to provide an opportunity for capital gains. He explains: ''Most of these retirees hold some company stock when they leave and would rather sell their children than sell those shares.'' Cooper suggests that his clients invest up to 5% of their portfolios in real estate limited partnerships that pass along income from mortgages and profits from any properties that are sold. ''You can't own real estate inside an IRA,'' notes Cooper, ''so we suggest these so-called participating mortgages as the next best thing for a client who needs some inflation protection.'' He recommends the products of major syndicators such as JBM (800-562-7355) and Balcor (800-422-5267), a Shearson subsidiary. Cooper, 41, has enjoyed the high demand for his services. ''Brokerage companies don't teach their brokers anything about the special problems a customer faces at retirement, particularly when offered one of the currently popular 'early out' packages,'' says the affable New Yorker, who now lives in San Francisco's Richmond District with his wife Joan and children Courtney, 3, and Andrew IV, 6. Last year, Cooper's network of brokers generated $12 million in revenues for Dean Witter. Over the past three years, Cooper was the company's top-performing broker.