I hope NOBODY on this board is silly enough to base anything substantial on these "cooked" numbers from the govt ……I dont think accuracy has been a prime objective in reporting anything that disagree's with this "Goldilocks" economy for a long, long time.
3.5%; qc, I owe you a beer at the next meet up. Who would have thunk it, 3.5%?
Well, at least gold was up today. Figure that; good news on GDP (if you don’t look too closely) and gold goes up 1%. I’d never make it as a market timer.
FSD, I wager you a beer on Q1 GDP: I say it’s coming in below 1.0%. Consumer spending for Jan. came in at 0% growth, and with the spike in gasoline prices (man, did they jump quickly over these last two days), folks are going to be in no mood to spend like mad.
Big spike upward in initial unemployment claims, today. Surprisingly good NY state manufacturing data offset by surprisingly bad Philadelpha manufacturing data.
I’m guessing that the housing starts and building permits for January, announced tomorrow, won’t be pretty.
Cheap bets are fun (but I’ve been on the losing for three straight now; today, I had to treat a guy to a cheap lunch for going with my heart, and not my mind, and the Bears).
I had the same side of the Bears game as you. More as a hope than an expectation.
Although I don’t really like the implied momentum of downward revisions (I too expect some weakening in Q1), I am inclined to take that bet.
My guess is that Q1 will be “artificially” inflated by inventory build-up. Remember Q3-2006 was “artificially” high because of inventory build up, Q4 is being revised downward partly because of inventory draw-down. So I’m hoping that this oscillation is in my favor on this bet.
I’m starting to really think we’ll hit a recession before the end of ’07 (although, it may not be called until ’08, seeing as Q4 numbers don’t come out until then and you need two consecutive quarters of negative growth).
There’s too many factors lining up. The stock market is starting to look awfully frothy. I don’t think this rally is done yet, but we’ve definitely gotten into overbought territory.
I think Q1 will clock in between 1-2% positive growth, probably closer to 1%. But such things can be tough to predict.
