The discrepancy between GDPNow and Nowcast is up to a whopping 1.7 percentage points after today's retail sales report.

The latest GDPNow Forecast surged to 4.5% following recent economic reports.

The GDPNow model estimate for real GDP growth (seasonally adjusted annual rate) in the second quarter of 2018 is 4.5 percent on July 16, up from 3.9 percent on July 11. The nowcast of second-quarter real consumer spending growth increased from 2.7 percent to 3.1 percent after this morning's retail sales report from the U.S. Census Bureau. The nowcast of second-quarter real federal government spending growth increased from 1.4 percent to 5.6 percent after the Monthly Treasury Statement release on Thursday, July 12, from the U.S. Department of the Treasury's Bureau of the Fiscal Service.

Spread Widens

The spread between GDPNow and Nowcast is now a whopping 1.7 percentage points.

The most recent Nowcast report is from July 13.

Nowcast has hardly budged on any economic data. I do expect a jump when Nowcast reports on Friday, July 20.

The alleged margin of error on these reports is one percentage point, so if there is not a big jump in Nowcast on Friday, at least one of the reports is going to be well out of bounds.