by Calculated Risk on 5/03/2022 11:54:00 PM

Wednesday:
• At 7:00 AM ET, The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) will release the results for the mortgage purchase applications index.

• At 8:15 AM, The ADP Employment Report for April. This report is for private payrolls only (no government). The consensus is for 395,000 payroll jobs added in April, down from 455,000 added in March.

• At 8:30 AM, Trade Balance report for March from the Census Bureau. The consensus is the trade deficit to be $107.0 billion.  The U.S. trade deficit was at $89.2 Billion in February.

• At 10:00 AM, the ISM Services Index for April.   The consensus is for a reading of 58.5, up from 58.3.

• At 2:00 PM, FOMC Meeting Announcement. The FOMC is expected to raise the Fed Funds rate by 50bp at this meeting and announce "commencement of balance sheet runoff".

• 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	66.2%	---	≥70.0%1
Fully Vaccinated (millions)	219.8	---	≥2321
New Cases per Day3🚩	60,410	47,510	≤5,0002
Hospitalized3🚩	11,584	10,531	≤3,0002
Deaths per Day3	318	320	≤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.

Deaths are declining week-over-week, but new cases have more than doubled from the recent low, and hospitalizations are increasing.

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