Goldman Sachs puts Q1 growth at 0.1% q/q AR close to adjusted GDPNow, while NY Fed indicates 2.58%. The St. Louis Fed “news” index stands at 2.83%.

Figure 1: GDP (bold black), GDPNow of 4/17 (teal open inverted triangle), NY Fed of 4/18 (red *), Goldman Sachs tracking of 4/23 (pink square), IMF WEO of April (blue square), WSJ April survey mean (bold red line), all in bn.Ch.2017$ SAAR. Source: BEA 2024Q4 3rd release, Atlanta, NY Fed, IMF WEO, WSJ economic survey, and author’s calculations.

GS and GDPNow stand apart from NY Fed and St. Louis Fed nowcasts. I don’t have a complete explanation why this is the case, although I suspect that it has to do with the top down approach of the NY Fed nowcast having a hard time accounting for the import surge caused by the front-running of tariffs. Jim Hamilton gave a rundown of the

Keep reading this article on Econbrowser Blog - James Hamilton & Menzie Chinn.

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