Today's Durable Goods number was blistering [3], if only on the headline. Coming at $230.7 billion, it was up a whopping $9.4 billion or 4.2%, on expectations of a 2.5% increase. The reason for the surge: the volatile transportation segment, which rose 14.1% to $80.4 billion. This is entirely due to Boeing aircraft orders, which rose to 260 this year compared to 10% of that a year ago, which however, as Quantas reminded us yesterday, can and will be promptly reversed (see: "Boeing hit by 'biggest-ever 787 order cancellation [4]'"). In other words next month will be a headline disaster. So what happened beneath the headline when excluding volatile series: well - Durable Goods ex-transportations decline -0.4% in July, missing expectations of a +0.5% print, with the June number revised down from -1.1% to -2.2%. It gets worse: Nondefense capital goods excluding aircraft tumbled in July, and imploded to -3.4%, crashing below expectations of a -0.2% print, with the previous print revised from -1.4% to -2.7%). This means that indeed the brief blip higher in economic activity in the summer was largely transitory and was purely a byproduct of seasonal adjustment. Expect cuts to Q3 GDP forecasts to commence imminently by the sellside lemmings.
Headline- good:
[5]
Non-Headline- atrocious:
