Durable goods came in with a negative reading for the month of September. This is bad because it marks the last month of the third quarter, and that may portend a bad report later this week on gross domestic product (GDP). That being said, some may argue that the weakness is not that far off of expectations that it might move the market’s anticipation for GDP.

New orders were down $2.9 billion, or down 1.2%, to $231.1 billion in September. Bloomberg had a consensus of a drop of 1.0%, so there is only a 0.2% differential.

The Census Bureau further said that this followed a 3.0% decrease in August, but that is worse than the drop of 2.0% that had previously been forecast by the Census.

Excluding transportation, new orders were down by 0.4%, and excluding defense, new orders were down by 2.0%. Transportation equipment was shown to have led the decrease, down by $2.2 billion or 2.9% to $75.5 billion.

The key nondefense new orders for capital goods was the sore spot in September. This decreased by $5.9 billion (or 7.6%) to $72.2 billion. Shipments were down 0.6% to $79.8 billion, unfilled orders fell by 1% to $752.2 billion and inventories increased 0.1% to $176.2 billion.

The revised seasonally adjusted August figures for all manufacturing industries were as follows:

• New orders, $471.3 billion (revised from $473.0 billion)
• Shipments, $479.4 billion (revised from $480.1 billion)
• Unfilled orders, $1.1941 trillion (revised from $1.1950 trillion)
• Total inventories, $647.8 billion (revised from $648.4 billion)

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