Durable Goods New Orders (Ex-Transports) or so-called “Core” durable goods dropped 0.5% YoY, extending its losing streak to 13 months. This is the longest streak in the history of the series with no recession. All segments of the durable goods report saw negative MoM moves with headline down 2.8% (small beat) but prior data was revised dramatically lower, Capital goods orders were drastically revised lower but still fell more than expected (-1.8% MoM) and finally shipments ex-aircraft dropped 1.1% MoM (missing the expected rise of 0.3% notable) with significant downward revisions once again.

  • Durable goods new orders down -2.8%, exp. -3.0%; prior revised down to 4.2% for Jan. from 4.7%
  • New orders ex-trans. down 1%, Exp. -0.3%; prior revised to 1.2% from 1.7%
  • Capital goods orders ex-aircraft down 1.8%, Exp. -0.5%, prior revised to 3.1% from 3.4%
  • Capital goods shipments ex-aircraft down 1.1%, Exp. +0.3%, prior revised to -1.3% from -0.4%
  • And just like that, all the exuberant “bounce” hope has been eviscerated thanks to a broadly disappointing report, and steep downward revisions of last month’s euphoric data.

    As we can’t tired of showing, this has never happened outside of a recession…

    The headline data managed to eke out a small YoY gain..

    Even as Core CapEx orders have gone nowhere for the past year.

    Finally, if anyone is wondering why the dramatic downward revisions from the exuberant January data, as we explained in detail here, there was a massive seasonal adjustment that juiced all the data.

    This ridiculous January seasonal adjustment outlier has now been “fixed”…

    … reducing the yuuuge awesomeness of the historical data.

    In conclusion, the Durable Goods number was so bad, even Wall Street’s formerly most permabullish weatherman threw up all over the data:

    Feb #durablegoods orders were terrible: headline (-2.8% vs +4.2%) ex trans (-1.0% vs +1.2%) & core (-1.8% vs +3.1%) all worse than expected

    — Joseph A. LaVorgna (@Lavorgnanomics) March 24, 2016

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