The headline number beat expectations, but Core Capital Goods New Orders (Nondefense Ex Aircraft) dropped 1.3%.
The March Advance Report on February Durable Goods was released this morning by the Census Bureau. Here is the Bureau’s summary on new orders:
New orders for manufactured durable goods in February increased $5.0 billion or 2.2 percent to $229.4 billion, the U.S. Census Bureau announced today. This increase, up following two consecutive monthly decreases, followed a 1.3 percent January decrease. Excluding transportation, new orders increased 0.2 percent. Excluding defense, new orders increased 1.8 percent.Â
Transportation equipment, also up following two consecutive monthly decreases, led the increase, $4.6 billion or 6.9 percent to $71.4 billion. This was led by nondefense aircraft and parts, which increased $1.8 billion. Download full PDF
The latest new orders number came in at 2.2% percent month-over-month, which was a significantly better than the Investing.com forecast of 1.0 percent. Year-over-year new orders were up only 0.2 percent.
If we exclude transportation, “core” durable goods came in at 0.2 percent MoM and only 1.5 percent YoY. Investing.com had a forecast a higher 0.3 percent.
If we exclude both transportation and defense, durable goods were down 0.5% MoM but up 2.6 percent YoY.
The Core Capital Goods New Orders number (captial goods used in the production of goods or services) was down 1.3 percent MoM. The YoY number was up 2.2 percent.
The first chart is an overlay of durable goods new orders and the S&P 500. We see an obvious correlation between the two, especially over the past decade, with the market, not surprisingly, as the more volatile of the two. Over the past year, the market has certainly pulled away from the durable goods reality, something we also saw in the late 1990s.
An overlay with unemployment (inverted) also shows some correlation. We saw unemployment begin to deteriorate prior to the peak in durable goods orders that closely coincided with the onset of the Great Recession, but the unemployment recovery tended to lag the advance durable goods orders.
