by Calculated Risk on 12/13/2021 08:01:00 PM

From Matthew Graham at Mortgage News Daily: Mortgage Rates Start Lower, But Could See Some Volatility This Week

... today's effective rates were a bit lower versus Friday afternoon. Improvement mostly followed a bond rally which, in turn, followed weakness in the stock market. Low volume contributed to the size of the move, which is to say it would have been even smaller during a busier time of the year for financial markets.

Nonetheless, things will probably get fairly busy in the middle of the week after the Federal Reserve releases its new policy statement. The Fed is expected to announce that it will curtail its rate-friendly bond purchases at a faster pace. [30 year fixed 3.17%]
emphasis added

Tuesday:
• At 6:00 AM ET, NFIB Small Business Optimism Index for November.

• At 8:30 AM, The Producer Price Index for November from the BLS. The consensus is for a 0.6% increase in PPI, and a 0.5% increase in core PPI.

And on COVID:

COVID Metrics
	Today	Week Ago	Goal
Percent fully Vaccinated	60.9%	---	≥70.0%1
Fully Vaccinated (millions)	202.2	---	≥2321
New Cases per Day3🚩	116,742	106,952	≤5,0002
Hospitalized3🚩	54,311	51,633	≤3,0002
Deaths per Day3	1,131	1,144	≤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.

Click on graph for larger image.

This graph shows the daily (columns) and 7-day average (line) of positive tests reported.