More folks than ever are making their way to advisors' doors, anxious for the kind of investment advice they hope will help them retire at all, if not well. Frankly, the good news and bad news are pretty much one and the same: Investing for retirement is feeling pretty dicey. That has investors looking for all the advice they can find.

With the performance of the stock and bond markets feeling about as predictable as the path of the next hurricane, investors are looking for some steadfast direction. An estimated 73 million Americans are scheduled to retire over the next 20 years, leading many to seek financial advice, often for the first time.

The level of interest in growing and preserving wealth for preretirees isn't surprising, given the fact that so few have done any planning at all, says Rande Spiegelman, vice president of financial planning at the Schwab Center for Investment Research. "The kicker is that two-thirds of Americans never calculate how much they need to save for retirement, and most age 40 to 59 have saved less than $100,000," he says. "We've got tools for allocation, diversification and the selection of stocks and bonds, but what still needs to be addressed is the need for adequate savings. This is what good planners are telling their clients."

While advisors report that their phones are ringing off the hooks-many of the calls from investors who want the skinny on how to invest for retirement-we started wondering what advisors are telling them. How do you invest for retirement now? To find out, we asked planners across the country to tell us where they see opportunities and pitfalls today and in the years ahead. We wanted to know what they're doing for their 50-something clients in particular. Their answers, which follow, are enlightening, sobering and disparate.

Advisor J. Michael Martin is concerned what impact negative returns will have on client portfolios over a significant period of time. The former director of investments at T. Rowe Price says he's not at all certain that the markets will provide well for investors any time soon or for any worthwhile period of time. "If you take the traditional approach and fool with the stock and bond mix in client portfolios you're willing to take more risk, because you believe if you ride things out you'll take advantage of future highs," Martin says. "I'd like to suggest that maybe we won't have that upside. I'm not sure we've gotten everything out of our system yet."

Several years of negative returns along with inflation can reduce a $1 million portfolio to $750,000 in the blink of an eye, says Martin, president and chief investment officer of Financial Advantage Inc. in Columbia, Md. The price of investments right now-which he terms "overpriced"-also has him concerned. "Because all asset classes are expensive now, just changing stock and bond ratios, no matter how you move the shells around, won't get you a high single-digit return," he says. Fifty-somethings "have miles to go before they sleep." Martin believes investors can expect bond returns in the 4% to 5% realm, with stocks in the mid- to high-single digits over the long term. "We're used to building portfolios earning 7% to 8% a year, with about 4% coming from cash income. Now it's like 3% and its harder to get the appreciation," says Martin. "It makes you stay up nights trying to dream stuff up."

To be sure, thinking outside of the proverbial box when it comes to helping preretirees accumulate some of the wealth they'll need to retire has become critical. For Martin, part of that strategy has come to mean shorting the market using institutional shares of Rydex's inverse index funds. While he usually holds about 6% of the typical client portfolio in Rydex, he might increase that to 10% for a 50-something investor who wants to be aggressive.

"This is an important hedging and rebalancing tool for us right now," says Martin, whose seven-person firm manages $170 million for about 160 clients. "This allows us to take gains in a down market and reinvest in long funds when the opportunity arises, instead of idling in cash which pays less than 1%."

Rydex isn't a permanent position in Financial Advantage's portfolios. "We think it's appropriate when the market is in the top 20% of its historic range. Below that, Rydex won't be as clear an opportunity."

Another "high-conviction concept" Martin is advancing aggressively for the next five years is real assets, especially energy. The prices of real assets will have to rise because demand will continue to increase as supply flattens, he says. In light of dsemand, his investment team is eyeing the oil and gas arena, oil service and mining resources companies. To date, Martin likes PIMCO Commodity Real Return Strategy Fund and T. Rowe Price New Era Fund.

What he is trying to avoid, as part of his overall strategy, is buying the S&P 500 or any other fund whose manager is a closet indexer. "That's most mutual funds. They don't let cash build up," he says. "Frankly, if the S&P is down 10% to 20%, I don't care about beating it."

This is where the overvaluation in the stock market is clearest to Martin, who believes that keeping this flavor out of his portfolios will give his clients a leg up. One alternative he likes are focus funds, such as Franklin Templeton Utilities Fund, which takes a more focused approach to investing with far fewer stocks. The attraction of these funds is that the managers are willing to make far bigger bets on their best ideas and not worry about how they compare to the S&P 500. On the value side, Martin looks for funds that build their portfolios from the ground up like Longleaf Partners, Third Avenue Value and First Eagle Global.

Another tactic Martin uses to increase opportunities is to keep large reserves (about 35%) in cash and short-term bonds. "I don't think there is exposure in not being exposed to the potential upside of the S&P right now. This hunkers down the portfolio. The risk is we get another broad Bull Market and I miss out. But I'm not there," adds the long-time advisor.

Advisor John Ferguson, who manages about $50 million for 77 families, says his emphasis now is focusing clients on what they need. "They might only need 5%, 6% or 7% returns to achieve all of their goals. We tell them flat out that to shoot for a rate of return that is higher, it might mean that they're taking on undue risk."

In the last few years, Ferguson says he has become more knowledgeable about index funds, especially those built by Dimensional Fund Advisors (DFA). "While they're not strict index funds they do eliminate certain characteristics, like stocks in bankruptcy. It fits with our belief that the 50-year-olds or older need less volatility." Ferguson is also using I Shares and Vipers to lower standard deviation in client portfolios while enhancing potential returns.

He's been keeping equity exposure fairly constant. "If we're targeting 60% to 65% in equities, we're there until we make a lifetime allocation change. Our allocations are based on life goals and income needs, so unless those change, there hasn't been a reason to shift that," says Ferguson, who is president of Ferguson Asset Management in Potomac, Md.

He has made changes on the bond front, however. For one thing, Ferguson is not extending maturities and has significantly decreased his portfolio's exposure to ten-year bonds. He uses individual bonds and bond funds, including funds from PIMCO, Fremont and DFA, but he shuns junk. He's also steering clear of individual municipal bonds, because of the need to buy long-term maturities. "You're almost better off in Treasuries at this point."

Ferguson, like many advisors we talk to, reports that preretirees are beating a path to his door. In the past year, he says he's gotten more new and higher-net-worth clients than ever before (typically with assets in the $650,000 to $700,000 range). They also seem more sophisticated and realistic. "Where they've been prone to postpone getting their affairs in order before, in terms of trusts and other documents, now you can push them a little bit," Ferguson says.

While business is booming for Los Angeles-based advisor Chris Van Slyke, he too is still finding that he has to battle clients' desire to invest in what has already topped out. "In the past four years, California real estate has appreciated dramatically [often doubling in price as it has in many other places in the country]. So I have clients who come in and want to sell all of their stock portfolio and buy more real estate, which has made many of them wealthy," he says.

The way Van Slyke sees it, his job is to keep them from making such dramatic changes. "You still need the courage to buy what just went down and sell what just went up. They'll ask me if interest rates are going up and I tell them, 'I don't know. But I know that asset allocation works. And I know that a portfolio that is lopsided with real estate and small-cap value and foreign stocks, especially small-cap value, will hurt you.'"

As a cautionary tale for investors who are gung-ho on buying more real estate, Van Slyke gently reminds them that buying another house is not really a way of running to safety. "That's their perception, but really real estate can be a vicious asset class. Between 1989 and 1990, real estate depreciated 50% in Beverly Hills."

Life has been easier for Van Slyke since handing clients 50% equity returns last year. While he admits this year hasn't been nearly as fun, he says his job is much easier and the perception of the value of what he does for clients is much greater than ever before. "Since the bear market, they've realized that I've guided them through some tough times and that we win by staying on track. It's a bit easier to get people to do the right thing."

Still, it's not always possible to help clients hit home runs. Van Slyke says that if clients are new at age 50, they are often pretty unprepared for retirement. They walk in and say 'OK, so the kids have graduated from college and now we're ready to get serious about investing. "Unfortunately, I have to tell them that you can't fix retirement at the end or everyone could retire at age 30. But I can help them make smart investment choices."

A big fan of indexing, Van Slyke uses DFA's large-cap value, micro-cap, emerging markets value and five-year global fixed-income funds. "You can't let current events whip you around or you'll make mistakes. I'm here to help clients maintain their discipline. I say 'Enjoy the good years like last year, and let's stay the course."