Today’s big report was from the Labor Department on the Employment Situation in October, but we also received word on factory orders for the month of September. With this being one month behind, it will have a very limited market impact. The report came to a gain of 4.8% for the month, which is just a tad under the 4.9% consensus from both Bloomberg and Dow Jones. Still, this appears to be the largest gain for the headline report in 2012.
If you back out the volatile transportation orders, the September report would have been up by only 1.4%. On an ex-defense basis, the report was up 4.4%. It should also be noted that the month of August was revised to -5.1% from -5.2%.
Bloomberg said on today’s report:
Aircraft orders really distorted factory order data in September and August, with total orders rising 4.8% in the former and falling a revised 5.1% in the latter. A slightly more positive indication comes from the important category of nondefense capital goods excluding aircraft which shows a 0.2% gain for new orders following a 0.3% gain in August. But the gains do little to reverse July’s big 5.6% decline.
Again, this report should have little to no market impact since the market was focused on the unemployment report from earlier this morning.
JON C. OGG
Top Gaining Stocks
Top Losing Stocks