So he asked a broker in his Albany, N.Y., firm to pick stocks for him. Now he pays commissions and kibitzes decisions, even while setting the overall investment strategy for the entire firm in his job as chief investment officer.
``I leave it completely up to him,'' he says of his broker. ``I'm too busy to handle it myself.''
It's tempting to think that insiders know exactly what to buy and when to sell, and that they do it effortlessly and frequently, trading stocks like poker chips. And it is true that few stock-market strategists of Johnson's stature give up control of their own investments, as he did. But neither are they the trading demons many suppose, zipping in and out of stocks like sports cars and leaving the rest of us flat-footed.
``This fiction that people `in the know' get in and out of the market is ridiculous,'' says Larry Wachtel, a veteran market analyst for Prudential Securities Inc.
So what do the pros do with their own money?
Five investment strategists and analysts with major brokerage firms agreed recently to discuss their holdings and strategies in brief interviews. What emerged was a portrait of investors with extraordinary access to information and computer analysis, but whose main attribute is not daring and pizzazz, but, rather, self-discipline - discipline not to succumb to the emotional roller coaster that comes with watching the stock market every day.
Surprisingly, most follow many of the same homely rules the rest of us follow: They make the maximum allowable contribution to their 401(k) retirement plans, even though it means putting savings in mutual funds over which they have no control. They avoid making too many trades because they pay commissions and capital-gains tax like everyone else. So they buy and hold securities for as long as possible.
