By Don Kaufman via Iris.xyz
The durable goods report is a hard data report that gets plugged into the GDP calculation, so it is important. The headline number for April missed estimates, but the core orders were strong.
New orders were down 1.7% month over month which missed estimates for a 1.2% decline. The prior report was revised up from 2.6% growth to 2.7% growth. The big reason for the headline swing was that aircraft orders fell 36.2% month over month which followed March’s 71.7% increase.
It’s not that we shouldn’t care about aircraft orders, it’s that the wild swings don’ t tell us anything about the strength of the economy.