U.S., Durable Goods New Orders, M/M %, September:
Actual: -1.3
Consensus: 0.5
Scotia: 0.6
Previous: -18.3 (revised from: -18.2)
- New orders of durable goods were weak in September — no matter how one looks at it. The bad news: New orders of durable goods overall were quite soft (-1.3% m/m vs. consensus at +0.5% m/m) and new orders of capital goods non-defense, ex-air (a proxy for U.S. capex) were also quite soft at -1.7% m/m.
- Shipments were ok as they maintained big gains clocked earlier in the quarter. The good news is that while orders were weak, shipments held up on the quarter. The -0.2% m/m print on shipments of nondefense non-aircraft capital goods still leaves that category tracking at 10.7% q/q annualized which will be quite supportive of Q3 GDP.
- Bottom line: Q3 still looks really good, but the outlook for Q4 capex has weakened.
- In terms of the report’s details, the swing factor was a surprising drop in registered orders of non-defense aircraft (-16.1% m/m) despite decent new orders numbers posted at Boeing that were on the strong side.
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- That said, it wasn’t just airplanes. New orders of machinery fell by 2.8% m/m, computers and electronics were soft at -2.5% m/m, and cars just treaded water at -0.1%. Even ex-transportation, orders still fell by
0.2% m/m
