Durable Goods orders expectations were pushed down to a dramatically low -5.0% after last month's dismal reading and the PMI data since but the print at -13.2% is mind-blowingly bad. Perhaps this is the sneak peek that Ben had? This drop is the largest since January 2009 when world trade had fallen off a cliff. It appears the seasonal-adjustments are the driver of the plunge as NSA is -7.2% (still very weak for August). We are sure there will be calls for the V-Shaped recovery from this but with a very different stimulus-environment around the world (i.e. jaded and soaked in much more debt), we suspect that will be less than forthcoming. The sub-indices were all weaker than expected but we note that defense -40% and non-defense aircraft orders plunged. On the bright side, all this terrible production data inspired less layoffs as Initial claims beat expectations modestly falling to its lowest (best) in two months - sigh.
Durable Goods Orders...
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Somewhat surprisingly, it would appear that non-defense aircraft orders fell 101.8% (yes more than 100%) which we are unclear on - it seems some 'returns' were in order as perhaps an airline or two over-spent on their credit card?
Seasonal-adjustments impacted the headline figure but the NSA data is just as bad - with the first YoY drop in Durable Goods NSA since Dec 09...
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Initial claims...
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of course the prior month was revised up to improve the optics as the dog-and-pony show of the Initial claims data statistics department rolls on...
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(h/t @Not_Jim_Cramer)