by Calculated Risk on 3/15/2022 08:52:00 PM

Wednesday:
• 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.

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.