Following the earlier laughable seasonally adjusted ADP data (because for some reason Mark Zandi does not find it necessary to supplement his report with the unadjusted data), courtesy of which the gullible public was supposed to believe that in February as small businesses were running out of money they proceeded to engage in a massive hiring spree, we thought: "hmmm: maybe there is a free lunch, and a drop in government spending however meager, will not manifest itself in economic data. Why, just look at the ADP..."
Alas, moments ago we got the January factory orders data, and our thought experiment was promptly terminated. The good news: the headline number posted a -2.0% drop in January, the biggest M/M drop in 5 month, which however beat expectations of an even more acute drop of -2.2%, which was driven by a collapse in defense and transportation orders, as spending cuts are finally felt through the supply chain. The bad news... well, we'll let the chart below do the talking.
Wait: we know - just ignore all those orders which were negative, just as we should do with corporate profits, with GDP, with jobs, with markets, with elections, and with everything else too.
That said, please point out where on this Year/Year change in factory orders is this much discussed recovery which is supposedly the basis for a new all time high in the Dow Jones. Because we are confused.