Weekly macro indicators and forecasts ahead of SVB

According to the WEI, the slowdown was still taking place.

Figure 4: Lewis-Mertens-Stock Weekly Economic Index (blue), OECD Weekly Tracker (yellow), Baumeister-Leiva-Leon-Sims US Weekly Economic Conditions Index plus 2% trend (green). Source: via New York Fed. FRED, OECD, WECIand the author’s calculations.

However, current forecasts and tracking estimates indicated growth in the first quarter, albeit with some large fluctuations (and all of this implied a negative output gap, taking CBO’s potential estimate as a given).

Figure 2: GDP (bold black), GDPNow (red square), S&P Market Insight (sky blue square), Goldman Sachs (light green triangle), professional forecasters survey median forecast (blue line), all in 2012 SAAR USD billions G. . Source: BEA 2022Q4 Issue 2, Federal Reserve Bank of AtlantaS&P Global (3/17), Goldman Sachs (3/17), Philadelphia Fed SPF (February), CBO Budget and Economic Outlook (February 2023) and author’s calculations.

Q1 growth is positive but barely noticeable, ranging from 0.6% QoQ SAAR from SPMI (formerly Macro Advisors, formerly IHS Markit) to a high of 3.2% QoQ from Atlanta Fed GDPNow. We now have about 40 days until the preliminary release of GDP for Q1 2023. Historically, GDPNow has slightly outperformed (has a slightly lower RMSFE) than the Bloomberg consensus on this horizon.. As of yesterday, this is around 0.55% QoQ SAAR.

Source: Liz Ann Saunders March 17, 2023.