U.S. Factory Orders Go Negative

The economic reports keep trickling in either near recession levels or already hitting recession levels.  The slowdown in China is worse than it is being reported according to bear Marc Faber, and the European situation continues to get worse.  Now the news is out showing that Factory Orders for the month of April went into negative territory at -0.6%.

Sadly, April was supposed to be better than May and that suggests that the real report for U.S. factories is probably even worse than this number indicates.  The report in March was -1.5%, but while this indicated “less bad” reading” it is also under what economists were signaling.  Bloomberg had a consensus at the report today coming in up 0.1% and the range was -0.4% to up 0.5%.  In short, this was worse than all economists had been calling for.

Factory orders are the dollar amount of new orders for both durable and nondurable goods, and this reading is used as a barometer supposedly of more complete information than the advance durable goods report that comes out one or two weeks earlier in the month.

JON C. OGG