The Flinchum File

Thoughtful Economic Analysis and Existential Opinions
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Welcome to The Flinchum File

I am an Accredited Investment Fiduciary at Bay Capital Advisors, an investment firm headquartered in Virginia Beach, VA. After retiring from Truist Bank, I started this firm to work more closely with a smaller number of clients, and it has been great! Our client load is about 25% of the national average.

Writing is not for the shy or the meek. It exposes a person’s mind and character. I hope you enjoy the view.

The opinions expressed in The Flinchum File are those of the writer, Jim Flinchum, and do not necessarily reflect those of Bay Capital Advisors, LLC

Shorter is Better

Today’s auction of $29 billion in 7-year Treasuries was average, with a bid-to-cover ratio of 2.88, almost exactly the rolling ten average of 2.86. Of the three auctions this week, there was lots of demand for the 2-year issue, less demand than usual for the 10-year issue, and average demand for the 7-year issue. Investors don’t want to hold longer term debt. Some analysts think…

What a difference 8 years make . . .

Yesterday, there was a very successful auction of 2-year Treasuries. Today, there was a barely successful auction of 10-year Treasuries. The bid-to-cover ratio dropped from 3.71 to 2.61. In addition, foreign interest dropped significantly. The market is saying they don’t want to hold any bonds longer than 2-years because longer-term bonds will lose value due to inflation sometime after 2-years but within 10-years. Forewarned is…

Almost Too Good . . .

The market can be much more volatile when few people are trading. That’s because one big trade can really push the market one way or the other. The period between Christmas and New Year’s Day is always a slow trading time. When I realized the U.S. was planning to sell $35 billion in 2-year Treasury bonds today, I was a little worried and wondered why…

Zombie Christmas?

I spent Christmas reading John Quiggin’s new book titled “Zombie Economics: How Dead Ideas Still Walk Among Us.” It began with Keynes’ great belief that “Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.” I believe that statement is true. Since Quiggin is a Keynesian economist, I expected he would lambast the Austrian…

Full Circle

Surviving veterans of the European front in World War II show pride in toppling Hitler. Few take any credit for establishing the dollar as the world’s “reserve currency,” but it was terribly important. Immediately after the war, the victorious Allies met in Geneva to begin mapping the Marshall Plan for the reconstruction of Europe. One of the many things they did was to require international…

Q3 GDP Growth

Today, the Commerce Department announced that growth in the third quarter was slightly better than previously released, i.e., 2.6% versus 2.5%. It continues the stream of good economic news. Growth in the first quarter was a whopping 3.7%, while the stock market was very bullish. Growth in the second quarter was a relatively sluggish (but still positive) 1.7%, and we saw a bear market. With…

Season to Celebrate

The S&P is now at the highest level since September of 2008. The Dow has been up ten out of the last eleven days. The Bull is back?? Of course, the volume of trading has been very low, making the recent good performance of the market less reliable. Obviously, traders and investors are taking the rest of the year off and good for them! The…

Crisis Investing

An investor takes a longer term view. He looks at those sectors and nations where growth looks most promising and then positions his portfolio to benefit from that growth. A trader takes a short term view, sometimes in minutes. If war breaks out between the two Koreas, you can expect both the U.S. dollar and gold to rise together, which happens very seldom. You will…

End Times ??

I was only thirteen years old in 1960, when establishment Republican Henry Cabot Lodge was the running mate of Richard Nixon in the presidential campaign, that they lost to John Kennedy. I recall Lodge being criticised by the John Birch Society and some religious groups as being supportive of a one-world government, which they believed was described in the Bible as the last step before…

Should I Be Worried?

I’ve been predicting a slow but steady recovery for the economy. Of course, the stock market is only loosely related to the economy. The market has improved this year more than the economy has. But, expectations for the stock market next year are awfully high. The S&P closed yesterday at 1244. Goldman Sachs predicts it will close at 1450 at the end of next year.…

A Patriot’s Lament

Last night, I watched The History Channel. (Yes, economists do watch The History Channel but only because there is no Economics Channel.) The show was about the Third Reich and showed the suffering of ordinary people. Not to be disrespectful, but it also showed their inconvenience. They had shortages of consumer goods and electricity. They even had tax increases. It reminded me of an evening…

Drumroll, please . . .

Yesterday, the stock market reached the highest point in over two years. Does that mean the party is over? No, of course not! Does that mean we will get back to our 2007 market high? Yes, but not in 2011. Does that mean we face smooth sailing? Absolutely not! December and January are usually the two best months of the year for the market. We’ve…

Manana Economics

I love that expression . . . manana economics. It covers those areas of economics that can be dealt with tomorrow, i.e., where kicking the can down the road is a good idea. Fareed Zakaria is a native of India with a Ph.D. from Harvard and writes a column for Newsweek, as well as being a CNN contributor. He coined the term referring to the…

A Grain of Salt

The Wall Street Journal just released their latest survey of economists. Generally, they are more optimistic! The economy grew at 2.5% in the third quarter. Estimates for the fourth quarter were raised from 2.4% to 2.6% and 3.0% for the first half of 2011. Also, they reduced the odds of a double-dip recession from 22% to only 15%, another good sign. This survey was conducted…

Tax Cut Deal

Yesterday, the Senate took the first step in creating certainty about our tax burden next year. A believer in Supply-Side economics will be delighted because there are tax cuts. A believer in Keynesian economics will be relieved we didn’t increase taxes during a recession. A believer in Austrian economics will be horrified that we made the deficit crisis worse. I don’t recall who said this…

Half Full or Half Empty

When the Fed announced QE2, they expected interest rates would fall. At first, everything went as expected. Now, those rates have started to rise. Ten-year Treasury bonds now pay 3.36%, which is a six-month high. One reason for interest rates to rise is that the Fed is causing it intentionally, which is not the case. Another reason is that the economy is improving, which makes…

Attack of the Vigilantes

We’ve often mentioned the bond vigilantes who could cause unimaginable trouble for the U.S. and greatly increase the burden of paying interest on our huge national debt. Today, our Treasury Department auctioned off $21 billion in 10-year bonds. Fewer bidders wanted the bonds. The bid-to-cover ratio was 2.92 compared to a recent average of 3.12. And, those bidders are demanding we pay a higher rate…

Reducing Uncertainty

Last night, the President announced a bi-partisan deal to extend the tax cuts for another two years, which reduced uncertainty. This morning, the Dow futures are up 81 points at this hour. You’ll recall the inverse relationship between uncertainty and the markets. It should be a good day for the markets! It is probably not significant enough to say it should be a good week,…

Partisanship

Normally, I am careful to avoid any discussion of politics, finding it seldom helpful. Both parties spin shamelessly. So, it may have been surprising to see me quoted twice in The Virginian-Pilot last Friday, referring to comments I made to a Senate hearing on redistricting. Redistricting is as exciting as watching paint dry but terribly important. Because the borders of voting districts had been gerry-mandered…

The Schizophrenic Economist

It has been fascinating, if saddening, to observe the political spinning around expiration of the Bush and Obama tax cuts this month. (Don’t forget a third of Obama’s $787 billion Stimulus bill was also a tax cut.) My inner-Keynesian economist is afraid consumer demand will decrease if they are paying more in taxes, so the tax cut should be extended. My inner-Austrian economist is afraid…

I was wrong . . . I hope!

When was the last time you heard the word “deficit” used so often? I’ll bet I heard it or read it more often last week than the last two years combined. That’s a good thing! When President Obama first appointed the Deficit Commission, I was disappointed the Republican Party did not support that effort and felt it would therefore just be another waste of time,…

Awful . . . but fishy

Today’s Jobs Report was awful! Economists were expecting 144 thousand jobs were created and were stunned when they learned only 39 thousand were created. Given the steady flow of relatively good economic data over the past few months, this is a surprise . . . a fishy surprise. Data for last month’s Jobs Report was increased from 151 thousand to 172 thousand. So, we created…

Like A Colossus

It was no secret that small, unassuming, professorial Ben Bernanke straddles the U.S. like a colossus. I have long felt that his “out-of-the-box” thinking and long study of The Great Depression made him extraordinarily effective as head of our Fed during the dark days of the Global Financial Crisis. I think he did a great job! But, who knew he was also straddling the world?…

The Miyagi Market

Back in 1984, there was a popular movie called “The Karate Kid”. Mr. Miyagi was the mentor, teaching karate to a kid. Because karate moves are complicated, he simplified one move by telling the kid “Wax on, wax off”. The stock market has become “Risk on, risk off”. Yesterday was obviously “risk on”, as investors flooded into the market, taking risk. All day, good economic…

Thinking About Friday

The first Friday of each month is the most important Friday to the market, because that is the day that the monthly “Jobs Report” is issued. The current forecast is an increase in jobs of about 144,000 and the unemployment rate holding at 9.6%. Creating that many jobs is certainly much better than losing 700,000 jobs a month, like we were doing just two years…

One More Time . . .

The most frequent question I get is “So what? Jim, your analysis is interesting, but you don’t say what we should do now.” The reason is that I am not permitted to give investment advice to anybody who is not a client, as well any anybody whose investment needs are not clearly understood. That is the law! In most cases, it’s probably better that I…

The Real Money Boss . . . maybe the only one?

When the financial markets didn’t behave the way he expected, President Clinton famously said “You mean to tell me that the success of the economic program and my re-election hinges on the Federal Reserve and a bunch of xxxxing bond traders?” He was complaining about the bond market, often considered wiser and more exacting than the stock market. Watching the bond market is very important.…

Two Steps Forward and One Step Backward

Yesterday morning, the Commerce Department looked in their rear-view mirror and raised their estimate of this year’s third quarter GDP growth rate. We did better than expected. Yesterday afternoon, the Fed looked thru their windshield and lowered their estimate of GDP growth next year, saying the economy is doing worse than they expected previously. Conflicting economic data makes it tricky to read the market. That’s…

The Wall of Worry

The stock market is always trying to climb a Wall of Worry. Today, the Wall was very tall, indeed! The day began with North Korea rattling a very loud saber. It continued with lots of unrest in Ireland about the pending, distasteful austerity package they have to swallow. It finished with conflicting economic data in the U.S, as well as the realization that our stock…