By the group's own admission, AllianceBernstein has been more optimistic about faster US economic growth in 2014 than most analysts.
This optimism was tested by severe winter weather which seemed to impede economic progress, but like the effect the Chinese New Year holiday season had on Chinese economic data, investors are coming to realise that the winter influence on US markets was an anomaly, not a trend.
“With the bad weather behind us, we’re now seeing signs that all of the economy’s underperformance in the first quarter should be more than offset by current-quarter outperformance, leaving our full-year 2014 forecast of a 3.2 per cent gain in real GDP unchanged at this time,” AllianceBernstein US economist and director of global economic research Joseph G Carson said.
Retail sales in March were impressive and well ahead of estimates. Sales jumped by 1.1 per cent, hours worked for private industries jumped by the same amount, and manufacturing production was up by 0.5 per cent.
It is worth mentioning that US manufacturing output rose by an impressive 1.4 per cent in February, indicating a rebound from the weather-depressed winter months; January’s decline of 0.9 per cent proves just how hurtful the season really was.
“The broad-based strength in retail sales lends support to our first-quarter real consumer spending estimate of 2 per cent to 2.25 per cent,” Mr Carson said.
“More importantly, the high level of spending in March suggests that the second-quarter gain could be in the range of 3 per cent to 4 per cent moving ahead at a solid pace, contrary to what many analysts had been predicting.
“We continue to forecast business investment up 6 per cent to 8 per cent for 2014, and the output data lends support to this view.”
And AllianceBernstein is not the only investment firm with a positive outlook.
On Tuesday of this week, Standard Life Investments made the bold statement that the first quarter will be the weakest quarter of growth in the US since the second quarter of 2013.
“Although Q1 will not be anything to write home about, the March data have been sufficiently robust to generate strong base effects heading into Q2,” Standard Life Investments chief economist Jeremy Lawson said.
“Even if there is no further growth in April, May and June - which is, of course, very unlikely - aggregate industrial production, manufacturing production, total retail trade and housing starts will all increase at more than a 3 per cent annualised pace in the quarter,” Mr Lawson said.
“That is why we remain confident that growth will bounce back closer to 3 per cent in the quarter, which would leave the economy on track to grow close to 3 per cent this year.”
