Betting on the eurozone economy has been fools gold for so long now it is difficult to take good economic news from the area at face value.
So this week's "flash" estimates of first-quarter gross domestic product from the bloc - which outstripped expectations to show the fastest growth in three years - have been greeted with overwhelming caution.
But there are several signs the 0.6 percent quarterly expansion of the 12-nation area in January-March is not a once off and that the economy will sustain this or even accelerate further.
Many analysts now say the region can probably continue to generate an annualised growth rate in excess of 2.0 percent over the coming two to three quarters and the 2004 outcome as a whole may even come in very close to that figure.
If so, that would be well ahead of the European Central Bank's existing 1.6 percent forecast for the year, and of forecasts of 1.6 percent and 1.7 percent from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and International Monetary Fund respectively.
"There may have been some small special factors from the Q1 readout, but the bulk of this looks like the real McCoy," said Klaus Baader, economist at Lehman Brothers.
"No one is going to get carried away by these numbers but they do suggest the base-case of a gradual economic recovery is entrenched and may well be ahead of schedule."
Early second quarter indications look reasonably positive. Business surveys from Germany, Italy and France and the NTC/Reuters polls for the bloc as a whole all point to a slight acceleration of activity in April.
NTC's GDP indicator - derived from its monthly polls of some 5,000 companies - was one of the few to predict a 0.6 percent euro zone growth rate in the first quarter. It also claims first quarter year-on-year growth may have been as high as 2.2 percent and that its April polls point to acceleration to 2.3 percent.
"The region is growing again and I think this cyclical upswing will now be sustained," said David Mackie, economist at J.P. Morgan, who sees the eurozone growing at a seasonally adjusted annualised rate of 2.25 percent in Q2 - same as Q1.
Household consumption, long a weak link in the eurozone chain, remains key going forward and concerns about the lack of job creation so far are a big reason behind the caution on forecasts. There is a risk the Q1 French consumption spurt, in particular, may not be sustained without more new jobs.
Unemployment did not rise nearly as much as in the United States during the post-2001 downturn - due mainly to the high costs of firing and rehiring in Europe. A downside is there will be also be less of a pickup in jobs on the eastern side of the Atlantic.
Optimists say higher existing wages and continued retail discounting could have bigger-than-expected effects on consumption. And there are already some signs of life in Q2.
Car sales in western Europe rose for a third straight month in April as new car registrations rose 4.1 percent and brought the rise so far this year to 3.2 percent.
But other areas of domestic demand - like inventory building - are also suspected as having an impact and this would clearly colour the second-quarter outlook.
"Some correction is probably due in the second quarter as some of the exceptional factors that helped Q1 unwind," said Eric Chaney, economist at Morgan Stanley. "As for the second half, our main case remains a consolidation of the recovery."
But forecasts are being adjusted higher - even if some just reflect the impact on economic models of Q1 data.
The Bank of France on Thursday pushed its second-quarter forecast up to 0.6 percent from 0.5 percent. The European Commission said while it was retaining a forecast range for the eurozone in Q2 between 0.3 and 0.7 percent, it pushed up its third-quarter forecast range to between 0.4 and 0.8 percent.
And whatever the jitters rising oil prices and interest rates are generating about the speed of the world economy later this year - and forecasts are still for a full-year expansion of some 4.6 percent - there's little sign of a slowdown yet.
US employment is catching up with the year-old business recovery and industrial production jumped 0.8 percent in April.
There are signs Asia may cool later this year but China's factories boomed almost 20 percent year-on-year in March.
What is more, the biggest concern for eurozone exporters in the first quarter was the sky-high euro exchange rate, which has eased significantly. The euro has fallen almost nine percent from its Q1 peaks against the dollar and about four percent against a trade-weighed basket of currencies.
Without a breakdown of the GDP numbers for Q1 it's hard to pinpoint one reason why the official data was so far ahead of forecasts, economists said. Nor does there yet appear to be a consistent story across the region.
France, emboldened by consumption during winter discount sales, led the pack with a 0.8 percent growth rate for the quarter. Germany's 0.4 percent rate was driven by exports. But what seems to have happened is that forecasters turned very bearish on the eurozone about six weeks ago amid hiccups in monthly national data releases, a dip in sentiment surveys and the uncertainty over the euro direction.
The median forecast in polls conducted by Reuters in January had shown a 0.5 percent first quarter call - but this was then revised down to 0.4 percent in April.
"In many respects, we're all back to what we thought at the start of the year," said Mackie at J.P. Morgan.
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