Business News Week Ahead Watch List

After noticeably under-estimating the strength of global economic data much of the year, forecasters are now getting it about right. Many of Econoday's consensus divergence indexes are clustered around zero: China at plus 4, Italy plus 1, Germany minus 1, and the Eurozone as a whole at plus 2. The US index had climbed as high as 42 on Thursday, boosted by jobless claims, which were more favorable than expected, and producer prices which were higher than expected. But Friday saw soft US data including retail sales, industrial production and also consumer sentiment, a run that left the index still in the plus column but only modestly so, at 7. Data from France and Canada have been coming up short of expectations, at minus 11 and minus 18 respectively.