Historically, I haven’t spent a lot of time covering GDP revisions for the US economy, but I’ve been compelled to change my attitude over the past year or so.

Market participants are keen to parse any incremental information that might be useful in refining macro and policy expectations, and in that regard, the revisions arguably matter more than they used to.

Growth for Q4 was revised lower on Thursday in the second estimate, to 2.7% from 2.9%. Economists expected no change. I’m inclined to brush that aside given that consensus was 2.7% originally (i.e., before the advance estimate was released), but it wasn’t as easy to dismiss the large upward revision to core PCE prices.

The reported 4.3% was significantly higher than the originally-reported 3.9%, and the surprise adjustment was set against expectations for an unchanged print.

Needless to say, that’s not what market participants or the Fed want to hear at this juncture given signs of re-acceleration in CPI and PPI and the generally stubborn character of price pressures.

Meanwhile, the personal consumption component in the Q4 GDP report was revised even lower to show a meager 1.4% advance. That too was notable.

We already knew spending faltered late last year, and indeed the advance estimate missed the original consensus by a fairly wide margin. Now, the disparity is even wider.

“The downward revision to consumption is not a good sign for the engine of growth to conclude last year,” BMO’s Ben Jeffery remarked.

The revisions are set against January’s string of upside data surprises, so it’s plausible to suggest that because the macro narrative is now so obsessively focused on the re-acceleration story, the downward revisions matter less.

On the other hand, you might argue that the updated figures are evidence to support claims that January’s readings, to the extent they weren’t the product of statistical quirks, still don’t reflect the underlying trend in the economy.

“Investors would do well to be extremely skeptical about the strong January US data,” SocGen’s Albert Edwards wrote Thursday.

“Aside from the well known seasonal adjustment problems, which have resulted in sharp rises in January payrolls and retail sales with irritating regularity (only for them to subside later in the year), January saw unusually warm weather,” Edwards added, calling attention to New York City’s longest snowless streak in half a century.