GDPNow at -1.5% q/q AR. But final sales to domestic purchasers little changed.

Figure 1: GDPNow of 4/29 (blue square), Goldman Sachs tracking of 4/29 (red triangle), Wall Street Journal mean survey (tan line). Source: BEA, Atlanta Fed, Goldman Sachs and author’s calculations.

With one day left to Q1 release, GDPNow should be pretty close to advance, given historical records. GDP is nowcasted to be growing below the lowest (20% trimmed) April WSJ forecast (Carlton Strong/JPMorgan), and only above 4 out of 62 forecasts.

Note that final domestic purchasers (cited by Jason Furman as “core GDP”) is still nowcasted to rise, little changed from the April 24th post.

Figure 2: Final sales to private domestic purchasers (black), and GDPNow of 4/19 (light blue square). Source: BEA, Atlanta Fed and author’s calculations.

Since this series is plotted on a log scale, final sales to private domestic purchasers is only decelerating from 2.9% q/q AR to 2% q/q AR (log changes).

With respect to economic sentiment, the Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence Index collapsed to below consensus (86.0 vs. consensus 87.7).

Figure 3: U.Michigan Economic Sentiment (blue), Conference Board Confidence Index (brown), Gallup Confidence (green), all demeaned and divided by standard deviation 2021M01-2025m02. Source: UMichigan, Gallup, Conference Board, and author’s calculations.

The confidence index was driven by the rapid descent in the expectations component:

Hence, despite continued strength in final sales in Q1 (remember we’re already halfway through Q2), the outlook appears dim.