Ian Shepherdson
Ian Shepherdson
Ian Shepherdson is an award-winning British economist. He is the founder and Chief Economist of Pantheon Macroeconomics, an economic research firm located in Newcastle, England, with an office in White Plains, New York. In February 2015, he was named The Wall Street Journal's US economic forecaster of the year for the second time, having previously won the award in 2003...
gain november orders revision robust
Overall, this is a very robust report. There was a big upward revision to November orders excluding transportation, to a gain of 0.6% from down 0.6%.
accelerate companies numbers orders output pace running suggested
Output will not immediately accelerate to the pace suggested by the orders numbers ... because companies are still aggressively running down inventory.
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Manufacturers are still miserable, and output will keep falling for some time, but they can now see light at the end of the tunnel, ... They are working off their excess inventory ... and are now hopeful of stronger orders by the year-end.
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The report suggests that industrial orders are trending higher as manufacturing recovers from the Asia crisis, ... There are no real signs of a slowdown.
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The bottom line here is that the month-to-month volatility in the durable orders data is such that the true information content in a single report is very small -- there's just too much noise.
aircraft apart data downward fell headline hit nearly official orders reported revision seems soft
The headline is all about Boeing, which reported 200 new aircraft orders in May, up from 14 in April. Unusually, it seems that nearly all these orders have hit the official data immediately. Apart from this, however, these are soft data. Ex-transportation orders fell 0.2% and there was a downward revision to April, now put at -0.7%.
aircraft building consumer delivery due higher january lower mostly orders pulled reported revision
The January revision is mostly due to the plunge in aircraft orders reported in the durable-goods numbers. In February, the index was pulled down by lower consumer confidence, higher jobless claims, shorter delivery times and lower building permits.
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We remain relatively optimistic about the housing market, but we do accept that activity fell sharply in the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11,
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We remain of the view that the Fed's near-term objective is simply to support the stock market until consumer and business sentiment improves,
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We have no real idea what the number next week will be, but we can be pretty sure that for the next few weeks the data will tell us next to nothing about the state of the economy across the country outside the areas hit by the storm.
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There are currently more than a million displaced people, and I don't expect many of them to be back at work by the time of the September payroll survey.
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With three sub-300,000 numbers in the past four weeks, it is beginning to look as though there has been some real improvement in the labor markets this year.
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With unemployment set to breach 6 percent over the next few months, people's view of the current economy is bound to deteriorate, ... But expectations are what matter for spending, and at this level the numbers suggest consumers spending will rise, albeit not rapidly.
certainly economy report serious slowing suggest
There is certainly nothing in this report to suggest any serious slowing, or any slowing at all, in the economy is near.