The UK looks to be doing a little better than most people thought. Rather than contracting – and leading the UK into a further recession – growth has been positive, based on improved service sector activity.

Is this a good sign? Well, its probably better than the alternative … but reading too much into short term results is dangerous.

Wait and see is probably the best advice. If things continue to go well for the next few months (at least two quarters), we can breathe a sigh of relief. In the meantime, we just pause.

So the figures do matter – but not always the figure (singular) – unless it tells us a real ‘story’. This is true of all performance indicators – they point somewhere but until we see a few consecutive results, the direction is not always clear.