U.S. ECONOMY CONTINUES STRONG - JUNE 2017

We may be seeing a trend where the first quarter of a year is the poorest of the year, but the revised estimate of the GDP in 2017 may be better than could be forecast, based on the results form the previous two year:*

Gross domestic product increased at a 1.2 percent annual rate instead of the 0.7 percent pace reported last month, the Commerce Department said in its second estimate on Friday.

Though the figure below is out of date for 2017, you can see that the GDP for the first quarter of 2017 is quite a bit stronger than for either 2016 or 2015.

(Click on figure to enlarge)

Some reason for optimism is that the Chicago Business Barometer is the best in three years:

The Chicago Purchasing Management Index, also known as the Chicago Business Barometer, climbed to 65.7, its highest since May 2014, from 59.4 in May. Analysts polled by Reuters had forecast a figure of 58.0 for June.**

All of this plus other indicators (such as CEO optimism) are that the U.S. economy may be heating up.***

 * http://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/26/us-q1-2017-second-reading-gdp.html
** http://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/30/chicago-pmi-june-2017.html
*** http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2016/08/ceos-optimistic-about-next-year.html
 http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2016/08/economy-better-than-gdp-suggests.html