Goldman Sachs on Monday raised its outlook for first-quarter US economic growth after a surprisingly strong report on the services sector from the Institute for Supply Management on Monday. The investment bank's economists raised their forecast for US gross domestic product growth in the first three months of 2012 to an annualised rate of 2.0 percent from an earlier estimate of 1.9 percent.
"Overall the report suggests firm growth in US service sector activity," they wrote in a note on the latest ISM services data.