ZF News and Press, Virtus Total Return Fund Inc. From 09/08/21

Despite the lowball jobs total on Friday, plenty of good news is buried in the small print, like massive revisions to the previous two months. In addition, Hurricane Ida may have suppressed reporting of August payroll data. There are some more clues in the ADP reported last Wednesday,...

The undershoot in nonfarm payroll employment in August is noticeable, with a flattening in high-contact services employment growth. Employment from the household survey rose faster (twice as fast in August), but not enough to change the picture dramatically. Goods production emplo...

We should question the inevitability of future events occurring exactly as people and the numbers foretell, as uncertainty changes as we mature into risk. Whether we like it or not, we become risk assumers or, hopefully, risk managers. My philosophy of life and investing is based on a...

The economic slowdown we’ve been writing about for months officially arrived last Friday in the form of a particularly weak employment report. But the US economy did still add 235,000 jobs in August. The economic recovery is still intact, even if at a reduced rate of change. ...

Strategas chief economist Don Rissmiller discusses the recent hit to consumer confidence and Covid-19’s longer-term ramifications for the labor market and worker productivity. We had a strong first half, so it’s not surprising to see consumer spending come down a bit fro...

We’re starting the post-Labor Day period with the S&P 500 sitting comfortably with a 20 percent year-to-date gain, with the tech-laden Nasdaq Composite nipping at its heels and making up for the big performance gap with value stocks earlier in the year. Earnings per share f...

Risk-adjusted performance continued to rise in August for the Global Market Index. Sharpe ratios in global markets generally are elevated. GMI represents a theoretical benchmark for the “optimal” portfolio. For further details see: Major Asset Classes | Aug...

Given the sizeable skew in the distribution of outcomes toward negative real returns, it's extremely important to be selective in high-quality fixed income, and to be truly vested in one’s investments so that portfolios are not permanently impaired. In the short term, the commo...

The expected risk premium for the Global Market (GMI) ticked up in August, reaching an annualized 6.1%, slightly above the previous month’s estimate. Despite the comparatively high GMI forecast, the current estimate remains well below the index’s realized risk premium fo...

The economy overall is booming in a way that has the labor market healing far faster than thought not long ago. Yet, American workers already sidelined by two huge recessions (we still hadn’t recovered from the prior one) just are not streaming back into the workforce. The ...