Durable goods orders
Durable goods are products meant to last three years or more — machinery, aircraft, vehicles, computers. The monthly orders report captures what businesses are willing to commit to expensive, long-lived capital: a vote of confidence in future demand.
Why it leads
Capex decisions are forward-looking and instantly reversible — firms postpone big orders the moment the outlook dims, long before they cut staff. Durable orders have turned down ahead of most recessions; the catch is extreme volatility: a single aircraft order can swing the monthly print wildly.
Reading it on this site
Our durable-orders signal watches the trend rather than the month — sustained decline in orders signals business retrenchment. Because one Boeing order can distort a print, the signal requires persistence: the noise floor on durable goods is the highest in the panel, and the threshold is tuned accordingly.