New orders for manufactured durable goods in August decreased $0.2 billion or 0.1 percent to $201.8 billion, the U.S. Census Bureau announced today. This decrease, down two of the last three months, followed a 4.1 percent July increase. Excluding transportation, new orders decreased 0.1 percent. Excluding defense, new orders decreased 0.1 percent.
Primary metals, down following five consecutive monthly increases, had the largest decrease, $0.2 billion or 0.8 percent to $24.2 billion.
That's an interesting shift. Remember, the thesis of most on "the street" is that we will not have a "second recession." (My view, on the other side, is that we've never left the first downturn, instead choosing to cover it up with government deficit spending - a temporary fix that must eventually end.)
The contrary view in the report is here:
Nondefense new orders for capital goods in August increased $3.9 billion or 5.2 percent to $78.1 billion. Shipments increased $1.9 billion or 2.7 percent to $71.3 billion. Unfilled orders increased $6.7 billion or 1.3 percent to $516.9 billion. Inventories increased $1.9 billion or 1.1 percent to $166.8 billion.
So on the top page we have a Rorschach test - you'll see whatever you want to look for. I don't find it particularly enlightening, and will instead defer to my favorite internal indicator.
And here we have another inkblot! The pull-through on shipments in both sub-categories exceeded the combined new order flow and in the case of comms the numbers were negative in both previous months.
You can either call that channel-stuffing or "much hope", but this much you can't do: It was not pure previous order conversion to shipments.
So I'll give it the "mixed bag" moniker, and defer judgment until I have more information. The one thing you can take from this report is that despite the market blowing up in early August, durables did not.
