This article applies factor models to forecast monthly Portuguese exports by resorting to an international dataset covering the country’s main trading partners.We find noteworthy forecasting gains up to 12-month ahead when soft indicators for these countries are pooled and predictors are pre-selected prior to factor estimation. Resorting solely on national data and with no pre-selection of predictors yields greater forecasting accuracy when nowcasting. Hence, data from Portugal’s main trading partners is more informative to produce h-step ahead forecasts. In turn, when hard and soft data are pooled, forecast accuracy is, in general, not enhanced.