GDPNow Forecast Dips Slightly: Baseline 1.8%, Real Final Sales 1.1%

The divergence between GDPNow and the New York Fed Nowcast GDP estimates widened to 0.9 percentage points in the past week.

GDPNow Latest Forecast: 1.8 Percent — March 16, 2018

The GDPNow model estimate for real GDP growth (seasonally adjusted annual rate) in the first quarter of 2018 is 1.8 percent on March 16, down from 1.9 percent on March 14. The nowcast of first-quarter real private fixed-investment growth increased from 2.4 percent to 3.3 percent after this morning’s new residential construction release from the U.S. Census Bureau and this morning’s industrial production and capacity utilization release from the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. This increase was more than offset by the modest downward revisions to the nowcasts of the contributions of real consumer spending, real net exports, and real inventory investment to first-quarter real GDP growth.

Nowcast Latest Forecast: 2.7 Percent — March 16, 2018​

GDPnow vs Nowcast

Nowcast is impervious to big change but GDPNow isn’t.

Following the Retail Sales numbers on March 14, Nowcast declined 0.18 percentage points. On the same data, GDPNow decline 0.60 percentage points.

Real Final Sales

Real final sales is the bottom line GDP estimate. Inventories account for the difference between real final sales and the baseline estimate.

Nearly two months of data is in. The first quarter rates to be very weak.

Mike “Mish” Shedlock