Yesterday it was construction spending that took the positive shine off a measly Q1 GDP print and today it is New Factory Orders. A mere 1.1% gain MoM, missing expectations of a 1.5% bounce (and down from a 1.5% rise in February) suggest anything but a post-weather bounce in the economy. This is the 4th miss in the last 5 months and missed even with a huge spike in defense spending (+21.5%). Who will be first to lower Q1 GDP final expectations today?
Of course, this is all in the past and so can be ignored in favor of hope... but wait - isn't the jobs data also from the past and yet we are happy to extrapolate that into Utopia?