Durable Goods Orders
New orders for goods built to last three-plus years -- a forward-looking read on business investment.
What it is
Durable Goods Orders measures the dollar value of new orders placed with manufacturers for goods designed to last at least 3 years -- vehicles, appliances, machinery, aircraft, and similar. Because it counts orders, not shipments or production, it's forward-looking: it signals what factories will be building in the coming months, not what they already built.
Why the "core" reading matters more than the headline
Headline durable goods orders swing wildly month to month because it includes aircraft orders -- Boeing alone can shift the whole headline number based on winning or losing a single large order. "Core" durable goods orders excludes transportation (and sometimes defense) to get a cleaner read on genuine underlying business investment demand.
Worked example
If headline durable goods orders are expected at +0.5% and come in at -2.1%, that ugly headline miss might just mean a single large aircraft order fell through that month. If core orders (ex-transportation) actually beat forecast at +0.6%, the underlying investment picture is genuinely healthy despite the scary headline number -- reading only the headline here would draw the wrong conclusion.
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