Jim,

David Rosenberg on ML’s Squawk Box:

"Mostly everyone likes to talk about how the data have all of a sudden signaled a turn in the economy, retail sales, home sales, yesterday’s durable goods report. We advise caution here because what we have seen is a very aggressive set of seasonal factors, which have made the raw data look extremely strong in the month of February." On GDP he adds "Let’s just say that after the latest data flow, the downward revisions have been so large that first quarter real GDP is now poised to decline at a 7.2% annual rate, which would be not only worse than the 6.3% slide in 4Q but the largest back-to-back contraction in over 50 years. As an example, look at the durables report that came out yesterday — the level of core shipments is actually 0.7% lower in February than we had expected despite the better growth rate (due to the sharp downward revision)."

Anthony Danaher
www.GuildInvestment.com