The GDPNow model estimate for real GDP growth (seasonally adjusted annual rate) in the first quarter of 2025 is -1.8 percent on March 18, up from -2.1 percent on March 17.
It is worth noting that the Blue Chip Survey (included in the link) reflects an average of about +1.7 (but declining) so there is a serious disconnect between the two.
From what I have been able to determine, GDPNow has the more accurate forecast history.
Just from my personal experiences/observations it seems more like a slowing economy rather than a contracting one, and we are already 85% of the way through the quarter.
DB2
Data is not the plural of anecdote.
For GDP Forecasters, Some Gold Doesn’t Glitter
Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta
Published Mar 7, 2025
“much of the widening of the trade deficit in January was due to an increase in nonmonetary gold imports from $13.2 billion in December to $32.6 billion in January.”
“Although GDPNow does not distinguish gold from other imports, the Bureau of Economic Analysis does, in tallying up the total of the net exports, subaggregate within GDP. Removing gold from imports and exports leads to an increase in both GDPNow’s topline growth forecast and the contribution of net exports to that forecast, of about 2 percentage points. The topline growth forecasts also increased today—standard model -2.4 percent to -1.6 percent, “gold adjusted” model -0.4 percent to 0.4 percent—as data from today’s labor market report came in stronger than the model was expecting based on the limited February data the model received prior to that release.”
Too early to say, of course, but from your link:
As always, we’ll have to wait for more data and then, of course, the actual data from BEA (which won’t come until April 30th). More worrying in the current data, to me, is not the massive surge in imports — instead, it’s that real personal consumption expenditures and real private fixed investment are currently projected to be flat in Q1. If consumption growth is 0% in Q1, it will be a bad GDP report, regardless of everything else in the data.
With a little over a week left for the end of the quarter, that projection appears to be accurate.
More reasonable than a forecast of 2% contraction.
DB2
What BEA?? DOGING, DOGING, they will be gone quickly when their output does not match the required growth of 10% to 15% per month…