Six GDP Estimates: ZeroHedge, Mish, GDPNow, Nowcast, ISM, Markit

On Wednesday, I asked a handful of bloggers and economic writers their estimate for first quarter GDP.

ZeroHedge was the only one willing to publicly take a stance. I told him my forecast on the same day, but I had already announced my forecast on live radio on Monday.

First, let’s look at the two most widely followed forecasts.

GDPNow Forecast: 0.6 Percent — April 7, 2017

The GDPNow model forecast for real GDP growth (seasonally adjusted annual rate) in the first quarter of 2017 is 0.6 percent on April 7, down from 1.2 percent on April 4. The forecast for first-quarter real GDP growth fell 0.4 percentage points after the light vehicle sales release from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis and the ISM Non-Manufacturing Report On Business from the Institute for Supply Management on Wednesday and 0.2 percentage points after the employment release from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and the wholesale trade release from the U.S. Census Bureau this morning. Since April 4, the forecasts for first-quarter real consumer spending growth and real nonresidential equipment investment growth have fallen from 1.2 percent and 9.7 percent to 0.6 percent and 5.6 percent, respectively.

FRBNY Nowcast: 2.8 Percent — April 7, 2017

The FRBNY Staff Nowcast stands at 2.8% for 2017:Q1 and 2.6% for 2017:Q2.

News from this week’s data releases brought the nowcast for Q1 down 0.1 percentage point while the nowcast for Q2 was virtually unchanged.

Negative contributions from both imports and exports as well as from today’s nonfarm payrolls offset the positive contribution from the ISM manufacturing employment index.

FRBNY Nowcast Details

GDPNow Details

On April 7, GDPNow dropped 0.4 percentage points due to auto sales and ISM. I have a question into Pat Higgins at GDPNow for a breakdown.

If ISM had a positive impact, the amount of decrease attributable to autos is greater than 0.4 percentage points. My assumption is ISM did not change the numbers much.