Latest from Joan

Bond Lemmings are Heading for the Cliff
9/8/2010 @ 5:07 pm
 
“lemming [ˈlɛmɪŋ]
n
1. (Life Sciences & Allied Applications / Animals) any of various volelike rodents of the genus Lemmus and related genera, of northern and arctic regions of Europe, Asia, and North America: family Cricetidae. The Scandinavian variety, Lemmus lemmus, migrates periodically when its population reaches a peak
 
2. a member of any large group following an unthinking course towards mass destruction”
 
All You Need to Know Is In This One Little Chart
2/3/2010 @ 11:54 pm

Study this chart carefully. It holds the key to your investment future. Interest rates peaked at 19.1% in January 1981. If you bought thirty year Treasury Bonds then and put them into your safe deposit box, you have earned 18 or 19% a year in interest payments on your original investment and beaten the very best hedge funds. In the meanwhile, your bonds also increased in value. It was a golden scenario and yet most of us were completely averse to buying bonds in 1981. Interest rates had been rising for years and everyone who had owned bonds had lost money. Only 20% of investors were bond bulls then. Most people wouldn’t go near them with a ten foot pole. Does that sound like your approach to stocks today?

Working From Home
1/31/2010 @ 11:52 pm

When I started my investment firm, Gramercy Capital Management Corp. in 1986 the thought of working at home was not something I ever considered.   In the 20 years I had worked on Wall Street I had worked in large companies and small but never at home. My children were young and I wanted to get out of the house to work. But the internet has changed everything and opened new options for service businesses that must be seriously considered. 

Joan's Blog

Healthy, Wealthy, and Happy New Year 2011
12/22/2010 @ 1:49 am

As we approach any new year and in this case 2011, we greet our friends and neighbors with the above wishes for their future success.  It is not an accident that the first of the three is a wish for their good health.  The longer we live, the more we come to know the importance of good health.  It is not an accident that our site: JoanLappin.com is identified as the site for fiscal and physical fitness. 

That Depressing Bag of Bills
8/27/2010 @ 11:53 am
One of the more trying aspects of the current economic malaise is the subtle way it has stripped too many of us of our pride and sense of accomplishment with how we have conducted our lives. The 90% of Americans who still have jobs don’t remotely understand the degree to which those who are out of work have been made to feel helpless. If you are a striver who has done well in life until now, you are quite ill equipped to deal with your present situation. It’s likely you have been caught up by global events more than you have underperformed at your job and you don’t deserve to have lost your income stream.  It’s clear to me that those still working cannot imagine your anguish.
 
They’ve Pulled Back the Curtain on Our Financial Wizards of OZ
4/9/2010 @ 12:00 pm
So here we all sit with our diminished “fortunes” and estates to leave for our children. Congress spent last week grilling the very men we were led to believe were our “Financial Wizards” with solutions to all our problems. There they were before the once complicit Finance Committee investigating the Great Recession trying to discern what went wrong. There was Alan Greenspan, former Federal Reserve Chairman to several presidents of both parties.  This is not the same Mr. Greenspan who for years imbued us with conviction that he had his finger on the pulse of the economy even as he muttered gibberish in his Congressional testimony. This is not the same man CNBC assigned a theme song of “Mr.
More from Joan's Blog

Investing

Stock Market
Bond Lemmings are Heading for the Cliff
 
“lemming [ˈlɛmɪŋ]
n
...
Investing
All You Need to Know Is In This One Little Chart

Study this chart carefully. It holds the key to your investment future. Interest rates peaked at 19.1% in January 1981. If you bought thirty year Treasury Bonds then and put them...

Stock Market
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