The Bureau of Economic Analysis released its first revision of the second-quarter GDP report today, and there’s some good news: The annualized growth in the second quarter, originally estimated to be 1.7 percent, was actually 2.5 percent (this actually will come in for a second and final revision on September 26). Why? Exports were stronger, and imports were smaller, than they thought at first. The economy in the second quarter overall was substantially stronger than it was the first, which saw 1.1 percent annualized growth. (The other good news is that the BEA’s assessment of corporate profits in the second quarter indicates they rose sharply.)

The second quarter was better than the first, the BEA thinks, because of stronger residential and non-residential “fixed investment” (construction and renovation, mostly), stronger personal spending, and higher exports. Fixed investment is an especially good sign, since it indicates a recovery in housing and is considered a useful predictor of firms’ and individuals’ economic expectations (one invests with a view to the future). The main detractor they noted, which was weaker in the second quarter than the first, was reduced federal spending — that problem should abate in future months (one negative sign for the third quarter, though, is that inventories rose substantially, meaning there’ll be less activity in this quarter).

The stronger GDP number probably increases the possibility that the Federal Reserve will start slowing its quantitative-easing program in September. Counterintuitively, then, that could have sent the stock market tumbling, but U.S. equities actually rose a little on the news, and remain up on the day.