New orders for manufactured durable goods in May increased $2.8 billion or 1.8 percent to $163.9 billion, the U.S. Census Bureau announced today. This was the third increase in the last four months and followed a 1.8 percent April increase. Excluding transportation, new orders increased 1.1 percent. Excluding defense, new orders also increased 1.4 percent.
The bottom line is this was a good number all the way around. It also gives me hope that we'll start to see a moderation in the industrial production number from the Federal Reserve.
Let's break the chart down in three ways:
First, notice at the end of last year the month over month number dropped hard.
Secondly, the month over month number has started to moderate over the last few months,.
Third, the year over year number bottomed in January has has sat there since. That looks like a bottoming to me.
