Calculated Risk: Tuesday: CPI

by Calculated Risk on 8/11/2025 07:54:00 PM

From Matthew Graham at Mortgage News Daily: Mortgage Rates Steady Ahead of High Stakes Inflation Report

The average top tier 30yr fixed rate held exceptionally steady last week after moving just a bit lower over the weekend. By comparison, today’s rates are much closer to Friday’s latest levels and still very close to the lowest we’ve seen since October, 2024.

If the two key economic considerations for interest rates are jobs and inflation, the two key economic reports are the jobs report seen earlier this month and the Consumer Price Index which comes out tomorrow morning. It’s often repeated that the PCE Price Index is a preferable gauge of inflation, but CPI comes out 2 weeks earlier and thus gets most of the market’s attention.

Just like last month, market participants are watching to see the extent of tariff-driven inflation in tomorrow’s data. If it contributes to a higher-than-expected result, we’ll likely see some upward pressure on rates.
[30 year fixed 6.58%]
emphasis added

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

• At 8:30 AM, The Consumer Price Index for July from the BLS. The consensus is for a 0.2% increase in CPI, and a 0.3% increase in core CPI.  The consensus is for CPI to be up 2.8% year-over-year and core CPI to be up 3.0% YoY.