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JPMorgan Chase chief investment officer Ina Drew, a 30-year veteran of the company, has decided to retire from the firm, JPMorgan announced today.  Matt Zames, the current co-head of Global Fixed Income and head of Capital Markets within the Mortgage Bank department, will succeed Ms. Drew as the firm’s chief investment officer and will also continue in his mortgage-related responsibilities.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch has reduced its estimate for first-quarter GDP growth from 2.2% to 1.5% — the most pessimistic forecast on Wall Street.

Although the job market is improving, wage growth isn't keeping up with inflation, the brokerage points out, adding that recent data on construction have also been weak. Furthermore, even if there are only modest revisions to January and February data and monthly consumption grows 0.3% in March, annualized consumption will still be just 2.3% in the first quarter, Merrill says.

The U.S. Consumer Confidence Index (CCI), a commonly used gauge of consumer sentiment about the economy, rose in the first couple weeks of February to its highest level since last June. The CCI now stands at 75.1, up almost a full point from 74.2 at the end of January and more than 22 points from June 2010's level of 52.9.

Notably, economists polled by MarketWatch were accurate in their prediction for mid-February, which called for CCI of 75.