Durable Goods Somehow Show Upside Surpise

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Apr 27, 8:34PM EDT · Published Oct 29, 7:40AM EDT

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Commerce_department_logo The Commerce Department has reported that Durable Goods for September have somehow managed to beat expectations this morning. While the durable goods report for big ticket items is the most volatile of all numbers and is often not representative of the whole economy, it is nice to see that some numbers are at least holding up.

The headline number came in at +0.8% and the ex-Transportation numbercame in at -1.1%. Economists were mostly looking for a drop at -1.0%headline estimate. On an ex-Defense basis, Durable Goods were -0.6%.

Business equipment spending wasn’t that hot, as it showed a reading of-1.4%. August’s reading was -2.2% for business equipment spending.

August Durable Goods were also revised to -5.5% from -4.8%, so this is coming off of a horrible month before.

Don’t look for any help from primary metals, which fell by a rate of -4.5%. Computers and electronics also fell by -1.4%.

These numbers are in no way "hot" and won’t keep the FOMC from makingthe same rate cut decision that would have been made with data as of7:00 AM this morning. But at least the whole shooting match hasn’tgone to hell in a hand basket.

Jon C. Ogg
October 29, 2008

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.