Weekend: Schedule for Week of March 9, 2025 Pre-Market Data and Bloomberg futures S&P 500 are down 48 and DOW futures are down 294 (fair value). WTI futures at $67.04 per barrel and Brent at $70.36 per barrel. A year ago, WTI was at $79, and Brent was at $84 - so WTI oil prices are down about 11% year-over-year. Here is a graph from Gasbuddy.com for nationwide gasoline prices. Nationally prices are at $3.05 per gallon. A year ago, prices were at $3.40 per gallon, so gasoline prices are down $0.35 year-over-year.

The BLS reported 151 thousand non-farm jobs were added in February.   During the Winter months, I like to look at the weather impact on the report. The BLS reported 404 thousand people were employed in non-agriculture industries, with a job, but not at work due to bad weather. The average for February over the previous 10 years was 300 thousand (median 222 thousand), so more people than normal were impacted by bad weather. Weather-Adjusted Change in Total Nonfarm Employment (monthly change, seasonally adjusted). They use local area weather to estimate the impact on employment. For February, the San Francisco Fed estimated that weather reduced employment by 2 to 12 thousand jobs. It appears weather adjusted job gains were around 160 thousand in February (seasonally adjusted)

At the Calculated Risk Real Estate Newsletter this week: Click on graph for larger image. ICE Mortgage Monitor: Property Insurance Costs Rose at a Record Rate in 2024 Fannie and Freddie: Single Family Serious Delinquency Rates Increased in January 1st Look at Local Housing Markets in February Asking Rents Mostly Unchanged Year-over-year Final Look at Local Housing Markets in January and a Look Ahead to February Sales

The key report this week is February CPI. ----- Monday, March 10th ----- No major economic releases scheduled. ----- Tuesday, March 11th ----- 6:00 AM ET: NFIB Small Business Optimism Index for February. 10:00 AM ET: Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey for January from the BLS. ----- Wednesday, March 12th ----- 7:00 AM ET: The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) will release the results for the mortgage purchase applications index. Consumer Price Index for February from the BLS. The consensus is for a 0.3% increase in CPI, and a 0.3% increase in core CPI.  The consensus is for CPI to be up 2.9% Year-over-year (YoY), and core CPI to be up 3.2% YoY. ----- Thursday, March 13th ----- 8:30 AM: The initial weekly unemployment claims report will be released. The consensus is for 225 initial claims up from 221 thousand last week. Producer Price Index for February from the BLS. The consensus is for a 0.3% increase in PPI, and a 0.3% increase in core PPI. Q4 Flow of Funds Accounts of the United States from the Federal Reserve. ----- Friday, March 14th ----- 10:00 AM: University of Michigan's Consumer sentiment index (Preliminary for March).

Note: Mortgage rates are from MortgageNewsDaily.com and are for top tier scenarios. For deaths, I'm currently using 4 weeks ago for "now", since the most recent three weeks will be revised significantly. Note: "Effective May 1, 2024, hospitals are no longer required to report COVID-19 hospital admissions, hospital capacity, or hospital occupancy data."  So I'm no longer tracking hospitalizations. COVID Metrics  NowWeek AgoGoal Deaths per Week735878≤3501 1my goals to stop weekly posts. 🚩 Increasing number weekly for Deaths. ✅ Goal met. Click on graph for larger image. This graph shows the weekly (columns) number of deaths reported since Jan 2023. Although weekly deaths met the original goal to stop posting in June 2023 (low of 314 deaths), I'm continuing to post now that deaths are above the goal again - and I'll continue to post until weekly deaths are once again below the goal. Weekly deaths are now decreasing following the winter pickup. And here is a graph I'm following concerning COVID in wastewater as of March 6th: This appears to be a leading indicator for COVID hospitalizations and deaths.  This has moving down recently. Nationally COVID in wastewater is "Low", down from "High" three weeks ago, according to the CDC.