US GDP coming up, 2015 Q1 was poor but... - Rabobank

FXStreet (Guatemala) - With US GDP coming up, analysts at Rabobank explained that while the poor US GDP growth figure in 2015Q1 can be attributed to several transitory economic factors, problems with the seasonal adjustment of the data appear to have played a major role as well.

Key Quotes:

"Although the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) presents GDP as ‘seasonally adjusted’, the time series still exhibits seasonal variation, with a downward bias in first quarter GDP growth."

"In fact, once this ‘residual seasonality’ is removed, we may very well see a positive GDP growth figure for Q1."

"The BEA intends to address this issue in the annual revision on July 30. Our application of X-12 ARIMA to the GDP time series suggests 1.25% GDP growth in Q1."