Atlanta Fed Q3 GDPNow +2.4% vs +0.3% prior

The Atlanta Fed third quarter GDP tracker jumped to 2.4% from 0.3% in today’s release.

“After recent releases from the US Bureau of Economic Analysis and the US
Census Bureau, the nowcasts of third-quarter personal consumption
expenditures growth and third-quarter gross private domestic investment
growth increased from 0.4 percent and -7.6 percent, respectively, to 1.0
percent and -4.2 percent, respectively, while the nowcast of the
contribution of net exports to first-quarter real GDP growth increased
from 1.10 percentage points to 2.20 percentage points.”

Why this might raise some eyebrows is that yesterday’s Q2 final GDP report had some big changes in it. The headline of -0.6% didn’t shift but trade, inventories and personal consumption did. Q1 was also revisied lower.

The conspiracy-minded may think that someone wants to shfit some growth to Q3.

Why is that?

The advance Q3 GDP report is due out on October 27, which is just 12 days before the midterms. You wouldn’t want the word ‘recession’ all over the front pages, would you?

Now, I don’t believe in any of that garbage because if you start dreaming in conspiracies you’ll never make money in markets, but I suspect others will be making more noise about this when Oct 27 rolls around.