Weekly reporting quirks make it sound worse than it is

The UK reported 146 covid deaths today, which is the highest since February but it's not as bad as it seems. There's a weekly bump in Tuesday reporting, likely due to weekend effects. The prior two days were 37 and 39 deaths. Comparing to last Tuesday's number of 138 gives a more accurate picture of the trend. On a seven-day average, it's at 88. Morever, there doesn't appear to be any sharp turn higher ongoing.

Weekly reporting quirks make it sound worse than it is

In terms of cases, the V-shaped recovery has stalled around 25K daily cases. They were at 23,510 today compared to 21,466 a week ago.

The best news is that the UK crossed 75% vaccinated today.

The market is watching cases in the US for signs of a v-shaped peak. What's more-worrisome about the US though is that hospitalizations have tracked much higher than in the UK and in a few states are at pandemic highs.

I worry that high cases may stifle the school year in the US and elsewhere this year. That would be a headwind to economic growth.

In terms of FX, cable has been bouncing around in the last hour in a 30 pip round trip. That looks to be fixing flows rather than covid or anything else fundamental.