the phrase "hit a slowdown"
I mean, Europe is in a recession, China is slowing, but right now, even our own fundamentals are really lukewarm at best, so we’ve got ourselves in this pattern that we’ve seen each of the past three years where the economy starts out great the first 3 or 4 months of the year, then we tend to hit a slowdown in about the second quarter.
what does "own fundamentals are really lukewarm at best" mean? And what does "got ourselves in this pattern " mean? what is "hit a slowdown"?

Question

Answer

we often use heat to describe an economy - 'hot' meaning really good, or 'on the boil' ... lukewarm or tepid means slightly warm, but not cool.  Describing economy it means still growing, but not fast. In the context of China where growth has been at 8-10% it will still mean something like 5% and that is pretty good compared with Europe.  The fundamentals of  an economy would refer to quantitative measures like (un)employment, balance of trade, inflation, interest rate.  In a pattern means there is a repeating behaviour each year.  Hit a slowdown = the rate of economic growth slows or cools down (goes from hot to lukewarm to cool)

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