Advance Durable Goods Orders:

The U.S. Census Bureau reported that New Orders for Manufactured Durable Goods rose 2.9% in August to $312.1 billion, bouncing back after two months of decline. Transportation equipment led the gains, climbing 7.9% to $110.2 billion. Excluding transportation and defense, orders also saw modest increases of 0.4% and 1.9%, respectively.

Figure 1:

Figure 1 shows the history of DG orders from 2015 to present. New orders totaled $312.1M in April, up 8.7 y/y.

At Gerdau, we routinely monitor advance durable goods orders since it provides a good read on the current health of the US manufacturing economy and its probable short-run future.