The economic surprise index from Citigroup is one of my favourite indicators. It measures how well various economies have done in relation to what economists were expecting.

The story so far this year is that Canada has vastly outperformed forecasts. A big part of that is a rebound in oil prices but it also reflects what was an overly-bearish view of economists.

On the flipside, Europe has been a major disappointment even by the low bar that was set by economists. That shouldn’t surprise anyone but I didn’t expect to see the USA at the bottom of the list. It’s done better than Europe but the overall tenor of the numbers has been weak, including today’s ISM non-manufacturing data.

The big question now is whether economists got their forecasts completely wrong, or if they just got the timing wrong.