by Calculated Risk on 8/15/2022 08:42:00 PM

From Matthew Graham at Mortgage News Daily: Mortgage Rates Slightly Lower to Begin The Week

After rising above 6% in June and falling briefly below 5% by August 1st, mortgage rates have been calming down and staying slightly flatter in the big picture. Last week's highest levels were seen on Thursday afternoon or Friday morning depending on the lender. Today's rates are back down to the levels seen earlier in the week. [30 year fixed 5.25%]
emphasis added

Tuesday:
• At 8:30 AM ET: Housing Starts for July. The consensus is for 1.540 million SAAR, down from 1.559 million SAAR in June.

• At 9:15 AM, The Fed will release Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization for July. The consensus is for a 0.3% increase in Industrial Production, and for Capacity Utilization to increase to 80.1%.

On COVID (focus on hospitalizations and deaths):

Hospitalizations have almost quadrupled from the lows in April 2022.

COVID Metrics
	Now	Week Ago	Goal
New Cases per Day2	95,209	114,409	≤5,0001
Hospitalized2	32,099	37,287	≤3,0001
Deaths per Day2	411	4369	≤501
1my goals to stop daily posts, 27-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.

Average daily deaths bottomed in July 2021 at 214 per day.