The Trouble of Durable Goods

Durable goods orders for the month of January is expected to be reported early Tuesday morning at 8:30 AM EST.  Bloomberg’s consensus economist target is -0.7%, but this number can be very volatile and the rage is very wide at -2.1% to +0.5%.  Because this number can be so volatile, it is very often that the economists get it very wrong.

Our take is that there may be at least some upside to the report.  By the time January came around, stocks were surging and the fears of a deathblow from Europe had started to abate considerably.

Bloomberg does show a report that the prior reading in December was up 3.0% after a prior month surge in November of +4.2% after its revision.  Excluding transportation sales in the durable goods report, the durable goods came to 2.2% in the prior month versus a 0.3% gain in November.

With many comparisons being month over month, we are going to hold off on getting too deeply into looking for any huge divergence in reality versus expectations.