• At 7:00 AM ET, The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) will release the results for the mortgage purchase applications index.
• At 8:30 AM, Retail sales for February is scheduled to be released. The consensus is for a 0.4% increase in retail sales.
• At 10:00 AM, The March NAHB homebuilder survey. The consensus is for a reading of 81, down from 82. Any number above 50 indicates that more builders view sales conditions as good than poor.
• At 2:00 PM, FOMC Meeting Announcement. The FOMC is expected to raise the Fed Funds rate by 25bps at this meeting.
• At 2:00 PM, FOMC Forecasts This will include the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) participants’ projections of the appropriate target federal funds rate along with the quarterly economic projections.
• At 2:30 PM, Fed Chair Jerome Powell holds a press briefing following the FOMC announcement.
On COVID (focus on hospitalizations and deaths):
| COVID Metrics | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Now | Week Ago |
Goal | ||
| Percent fully Vaccinated | 65.3% | — | ≥70.0%1 | |
| Fully Vaccinated (millions) | 216.8 | — | ≥2321 | |
| New Cases per Day3 | 32,458 | 39,184 | ≤5,0002 | |
| Hospitalized3 | 21,260 | 30,474 | ≤3,0002 | |
| Deaths per Day3 | 1,186 | 1,211 | ≤502 | |
| 1 Minimum to achieve “herd immunity” (estimated between 70% and 85%). 2my goals to stop daily posts, 37-day average for Cases, Currently Hospitalized, and Deaths 🚩 Increasing 7-day average week-over-week for Cases, Hospitalized, and Deaths ✅ Goal met. |
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Click on graph for larger image.
This graph shows the daily (columns) and 7-day average (line) of deaths reported.
New cases, hospitalizations and deaths are still declining.