Advance Durable Goods Orders

By Spencer

The advance durable goods numbers are not reassuring. The unsmoothed total orders were down 4.5%. Although the monthly data is very noisy, the smoothed data is also showing weakness as the apparent rebound over the previous two months disappeared. Clearly, the data peaked last year and is trending down with no signs of a trend reversal.
Much the weakness is in aircraft, but this is bad news for exports, the only source of growth in the last quarter.
But the most worrisome data is the weakness in capital goods orders where the smoothed year over year change is -4.9%. Capital goods shipments fell 2.5%, a very bad indicator for third quarter GDP growth.
GE confirmed this poor data this morning when it revises its earnings guidance down.