Poor housing reports and poor economic reports on durable goods and international trade took a toll on GDP estimates.

The latest GDPNow forecast is 2.6%, down from and 3.2% on February 16, 4.0% on February 2, and 5.4% on February 1.

  • After this morning’s Advance Economic Indicators and durable manufacturing reports from the U.S. Census Bureau, the nowcasts of the contributions of real nonresidential equipment investment and real inventory investment to first-quarter real GDP growth declined from 0.45 percentage points and 1.20 percentage points, respectively, to 0.37 percentage points and 0.95 percentage points, respectively.
  • The nowcast of first-quarter real residential investment growth declined from 0.6 percent on February 16 to -4.5 percent on February 26 after housing market releases from the Census Bureau and the National Association of Realtors.

    • The previous report was on February 16, but GDPNow posts intermediate points on release dates.

    Evolution of the Quarter

    The previous report was on February 16. Intermediate effects from February 21 and 26 were posted today. 

    Real Final Sales

    Real final sales are the true measure of GDP. Fluctuations in inventory balance out over time.

    Inventory contributes a fill percentage point to the GDPNow first-quarter estimate of 2.6%

    If we get another bad retail sales report, we can see under 2% GDP with real final sales close at or below 1%.

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