Summary Despite a disappointing headline print due to a drop in aircraft bookings, the March durable goods report shows that capital spending remained intact in March with orders rising across all core categories. Soft capital goods shipments may signal only tepid growth for Q1 equipment spending, but stronger core orders numbers signal improvement for coming quarters. You Can’t Blame Transports The fact that orders for durable goods increased just 0.8% in March rather than the 1.0% that had been expected by the consensus is partly a function of weakness in aircraft orders. Civilian aircraft orders were down 9.9% and defense aircraft orders tumbled 25.6%. But transportation as a whole was actually positive for the month thanks to a surge in bookings for motor vehicles. READ FULL ARTICLE>>
