First Forecast for the New Year: 2016Q1

Well I just got around to updating and doing the forecast for 2016Q1. In terms of the 2015Q4 forecast, I was the most pessimistic of the lot (-.3) and CIBC turned in to be the winner and the exact growth of 0.8%. This quarter I am pleased to say I am the most optimistic of the Banks (along with RBC) at a growth of 2.2% (annualized as always) with Scotia at 1.3% I incorporated in this forecast the real exports for Jan 2016. As the quarter unfolds and the monthly real GDP are released, it will be interesting to see if this "high" growth continues. Just to put the forecast into perspective the average real growth over the since 1997 has been 2.4%. In terms of future blogs I want to discuss revised data in general and the that was done last year for the entire series of GDP from 1981