Great Graphic: Data Surprises in US, Europe and Emerging Markets Turn Lower

This Great Graphic was posted on Pragmatic Capitalism. It came from Societe Generale Cross Asset Research which took it from Citigroup. It traces the performance of the US, euro area and emerging markets relative to expectations.  

There really are two moving parts here.  First is the economic data itself and the second  are the expectations.  After a while (and that while can be measured, economists whose forecasts are off begin adjusting to reduce their error.  

For example, the US data surprised to the upside after economists have revised up their forecasts.  They are less prone then to upside surprises, but it doesn't really tell us anything about the economy itself.  As it turns out, we suspect that many economists have revised up their forecasts just as the US economy slows.  

In addition, not all data is equal.  Is the EU sentiment survey as important as the PMI, for example?  And if the estimate for manufacturing PMI is too high, wouldn't that lend itself too high of an estimate for industrial output ?  Or consider that German reported February factory orders on April 5.  They rose 2.3% compared with market expectations for half as much.  On April 8, industrial output was reported.  It rose 0.5%, but the surveys, which had not been adjusted, showed expectations for a 0.3% increase.  Is that really a surprise?  And what to do with the downward revision to the January figure that was revised to -0.6% from a flat initial read ?