Who Do You Trust? Hedgeye's Macro Team Or The Atlanta Fed?

02/01/16 01:59PM EST

Who Do You Trust? Hedgeye's Macro Team Or The Atlanta Fed? - Fed grasping cartoon 01.14.2015

So... the Atlanta Fed just put out their first estimate for Q1 2016 GDP. Their call? 1.2%. As you can see below, we don't agree with that. 

Who Do You Trust? Hedgeye's Macro Team Or The Atlanta Fed? - gdp estimate

Let's just state for the record here that Hedgeye's Macro team has nailed the last five GDP reports.

Five.

The Atlanta Fed? Well ... not so much. In October, it was suggesting Q4 2015 GDP would be almost 3%. That was ratcheted way back. Its final estimate was 1.0% versus the advanced estimate of 0.7%. 

Who Do You Trust? Hedgeye's Macro Team Or The Atlanta Fed? - gdp fed q4

To be fair, the Atlanta Fed has done a better job than the supposed "blue chip" consensus forecasters on Wall Street. That's the truth...

Who Do You Trust? Hedgeye's Macro Team Or The Atlanta Fed? - wall street 4q15

Still, the Fed is clearly missing something. Fed Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer said today at the Council on Foreign Relations:

“At this point, it is difficult to judge the likely implications of this [financial market] volatility. If these developments lead to a persistent tightening of financial conditions, they could signal a slowing in the global economy that could affect growth and inflation in the United States."

It's not difficult actually. We have a lot of evidence that suggests to us that the U.S. economy is headed for a recession in Q1 or Q2 of 2016. In fact, we've got a 73-slide institutional Macro deck on it (click here, here and here for a taste). 

No matter. We'll stick with our process that's nailed U.S. #GrowthSlowing for the past year and a half.

Stick with us. We'll keep you a step ahead of consensus

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