U.S. Durable and Capital Goods Orders Declined – October 2011

Today, the U.S. Census Bureau published its monthly report on U.S. durable goods manufactures’ shipments, inventories and orders for October 2011 – the report showed a further decline in orders of durable goods and in capital goods compared to September.

According to the recent report, during October 2011, new orders of manufactured durable goods decreased by $1.4 billion or 0.7% to $197.7 billion; on the other hand, Shipments of manufactured durable goods rose by $2.6 billion or 1.3% to $203.0 billion. Shipments of manufactured increased during five out of the past six months.

Finally, the Non-defense new orders for capital goods declined by $3.5 billion or 4.6% to $71.6 billion; Inventories of manufactured durable goods inclined for twenty second consecutive months – last month they increased $1.8 billion or 0.5% to $367.2 billion.

This report provides a good indicator of the progress of the U.S economy during October. Since the new orders declined again (as they did in September), along with the decrease in the demand for Non-defense capital goods, this report seems to indicate a slowdown in the economic growth of the U.S.

Some speculate that this report may drive the U.S. stock markets down during the day and will drag along with it major energy commodities prices including crude oil prices.

Currently major commodities are traded down including energy commodities are and precious metals; the Euro and other major currencies are traded down against the USD; the American stock markets indexes are also falling.

Current gold price, short term futures (December 2011 delivery) is traded at $1,683.50 per t oz. a $18.9 decrease or 1.11%, as of 15:35*.

Nymex (WTI) crude oil price, short term futures (December 2011 delivery) is sharply falling by 2.18% to $95.87 per barrel as of 15:40*.

Euros to USD exchange rate is currently traded down at 1.3358 a  1.0915% decrease as of 15:43*.

(* GMT)

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