This chapter covered the essentials of interest rates. How should you, as an investor or investment manager, put this information to work?

      The best thing to do is to buy a variety of instruments discussed in this chapter. STRIPS, in particular, are an important investment vehicle for both institutional and individual investors. To gain some practical experience with the risks and rewards from STRIPS investing, you should invest equal dollar amounts in several different STRIPS with different maturities. Pick short-term (a few years), intermediate-term (10 or so years), and long-term (25 years or longer), for example. Once you make these investments, monitor their yields and prices.

      A good place to start with a study of interest rates is to visit some federal government Web sites. Try the U.S. Treasury (www.ustreas.gov), the Bureau of Public Debt (www.publicdebt.treas.gov), the Federal Reserve Board of Governors (www.federalreserve.gov), and the New York (www.ny.frb.org) and St. Louis (www.stls.frb.org) Federal Reserve banks. For the latest money market rates see Money Rates (www.money-rates.com), and for bank lending rates check out Banx (www.banx.com) or Bankrate (www.bankrate.com). Price and yield data for U.S. Treasury securities can be found at GovPX (www.govpx.com).