betting markets

GDP Forecasts for 2025Q4

Jeremy Horpedahl1 Comment

UPDATE 2/19/2026: the last GDPNow estimate from the Atlanta Fed is 3.0% and the Kalshi markets are now predicting 2.8%. I would expect this is a slightly better range than the 3.3-3.6% from my post written on 2/18/2026.

In April 2025 I wrote about several different forecasts for GDP growth. At the time the latest GDP quarter available was 2025Q1. We’ve had two more quarters of data since then, plus a highly anticipated report for Q4 coming out this Friday. How have these different predictions done recently? Here is the updated table from that prior post:

When I wrote the post in April 2025, I said that a simple average of the Atlanta Fed and Kalshi forecasts was the best simple predictor of the actual BEA advance figure. Based on the middle quarters of 2025, I think that continued to be true: each of them was the best estimate in one quarter, and perhaps just as importantly the NY Fed and WSJ survey of economists understated GDP growth pretty significantly.

There is still one more Atlanta Fed GDPNow update coming tomorrow before we get the actual BEA data on Friday, but based on where the numbers are now, we should expect Q4 to be around 3.4-3.5% (annualized) growth rate. This would put the total 2025 calendar year growth at around 2.3% — decent, but still below 2024’s 2.8% growth.

GDP Predictions: Pretty Good!

Jeremy HorpedahlLeave a comment

Last week I wrote about the GDP predictions from Kalshi and the GDPNow Model. They were both showing 2.4% for Q2 of 2025 last week. They both changed slightly by yesterday, up to 2.8% and 2.9%. The final result (technically, the “advanced” result, but the final one for purposes of this comparison) was 2.97%. The Atlanta Fed GDPNow model continues to be a top performer, and you can’t do much better than averaging these two estimates. And you can pretty consistently do better than the median result from the WSJ/Dow Jones survey of economists.

Here’s the updated table:

And here is the original post explaining the data.

GDP Forecasting: Models, Experts, or Markets?

Jeremy Horpedahl5 Comments

The 2025 first quarter GDP data came in slightly bad: negative 0.3%. I think the number is a bit hard to interpret right now, but it’s hard to spin away a negative number. A big factor pulling down the accounting identify that we call GDP was a massive increase in imports, specifically imports of goods. It’s likely this is businesses trying to front-run the potential tariffs (and keep in mind this was pre-“Liberation Day,” so probably even more front running in April), so the long-run effect is harder to judge.

But aside from the interpretation of the GDP estimate, we can ask a related question: did anyone predict it correctly? I have written previously about two GDP forecasts from two different regional Federal Reserve banks. They were showing very different estimates for GDP!

Both the Fed estimates ending up being pretty wrong: -1.5% and +2.6%. But there are two other kinds of forecasts we can look at.

The first is from a survey of economists done by the Wall Street Journal. The median forecast in that survey was positive 0.4%. This survey got the direction wrong, but it was much closer than the Fed models.

Finally, we can look at prediction markets. There are many such markets, but I’ll use Kalshi, because it’s now legal to use in the US, and it’s pretty easy to access their historical data. The average Kalshi forecast for Q1 (a weighted average of sorts across several different predictions) was -0.6%. Pretty close! They got the direction right, and the absolute error was smaller than WSJ survey. And obviously, much better this quarter than the Fed models.

But this was just one quarter, and perhaps a particularly weird quarter to predict (Atlanta Fed even had to update their model mid-quarter, because large gold inflows were throwing of the model). You may say that weird quarters are exactly when we want these models to perform well! But it’s also useful to look at past predictions. The table below summarizes predictions for the past 9 quarters (as far back as the current NY Fed model goes):

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Who Will Be the Democratic Presidential Candidate? Follow the Money (Betting Markets)

Jeremy Horpedahl3 Comments

Back in January I encouraged you to follow the money in the Presidential race, by which I meant follow the betting markets. I suggested this was a good way to cut through the sometimes inaccuracy of polls, and the uncertainty of listening to any one expert or group of experts. Bettors in prediction markets can take all of these into account.

Lately of course the big question in the Presidential race is whether Biden will actually be the Democratic nominee. There is much uncertainty right now, and you will all kinds of predictions from experts, media quoting “inside sources,” and other such rumors. How are you, as a relatively uninformed outsider, supposed to know who to trust?

The answer again I will suggest is: watch the betting markets. And if you check the betting markets today (aggregated across multiple markets by EletionBettingOdds.com), you will see that Biden and Kamala Harris have roughly equal chances of becoming the next President (and Trump is about a 60% favorite):

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Follow the Money in Politics

Jeremy Horpedahl5 Comments

As we enter election season, I can sympathize with those that want to ignore it as much as possible. But if you do want to follow it closely, here is my advice: talk is cheap, so follow the money.

And by money, I am not referring to campaign contributions. I mean prediction markets, where people are putting their money where their mouth is, rather than just making predictions based on their own intuition (or their own “model,” which is just a fancy intuition).

There are a number of betting markets online today, but a good aggregator of them is Election Betting Odds.

For example, here is their current prediction for which party will win the Presidency:

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