Durable Goods Orders Up but Core Capital Goods Negative Again

Durable goods orders are somewhat of a mixed bag today, but beneath the headline rise, weakness is easy to find.

The Bloomberg Consensus was for a 0.5% rise, and the actual result was a whopping 4% gain due to transportation.

Yet, transportation for last month was revised lower, and excluding transportation durable goods orders shrank.

More importantly, core capital goods orders declined for at least four consecutive months.

Let's dive into the Census Report on Durable Goods for more details. Here is a table of key items I made from the report.

Item	Mar	Feb	Jan	Feb-Mar %Chg	Jan-Feb % Chg	Dec-Jan % Chg
Total New Orders	240,175	230,911	234,272	4.0	-1.4	1.9
Ex-Transportation Orders	159,917	160,174	162,227	-0.2	-1.3	-0.9
Ex-Defense Orders	228,119	222,394	224,652	2.6	-1.0	2.2
Transportation Orders	80,258	70,737	72,045	13.5	-1.8	8.9
Capital Goods Orders	89,673	85,588	86,723	4.8	-1.3	7.1
Non-Defense Capital Goods Orders	80,213	77,504	79,214	3.5	-2.2	-0.3
Defense Capital Goods Orders	9,460	8,084	7,509	17	7.7	-6.3
Core Capital Goods Orders	68,189	68,537	70,062	-0.5	-2.2	-0.3
Core Capital Goods Shipments	69,611	69,889	69,789	-0.4	0.1	-0.6

Line items (except the last line which shows shipments) are new orders, in millions of dollars, seasonally adjusted. Core capital goods exclude defense and aircraft.

Once again this was another weak economic report excluding aircraft orders that have long lead times and are frequently cancelled.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com