View the full cat chart at Wikinvest

Cat Stock Blog

Caterpillar Inc. (NYSE:CAT) stock news and links

Archive for the ‘Economic stats’ tag

Factory orders tanked in December

Not a huge surprise: Factory orders dipped 3.9 percent in December, according to the Commerce Department. Associated Press reports:

Analysts are forecasting that manufacturers will continue to face hard times in the coming year because of a deepening U.S. recession and weakness this has spread worldwide, cutting sharply into demand for U.S. exports.

For December, demand for durable goods, products expected to last at least three years, fell by 3 percent, even worse than the 2.6 percent drop that the goverment initially reported last week.

Demand for non-durable goods, products such as food, paper and petroleum, fell by 4.8 percent in December following an 8.7 percent fall in November. Some of this decline reflects the big drop in energy prices that has occurred in recent months.

Be glad you’re not Boeing: Demand for commercial aircraft fell by 43.8 percentt.

Full report at the Census Bureau.

no comments | Permalink | Tags: ,
Tom Mangan posted at 8:08 am February 5th, 2009 |

This week’s economic reports

All times ET
Monday

  • 10 a.m. Construction spending (Nov)
  • 2 p.m. Auto sales, truck sales (Dec)

Tuesday

  • 10 a.m. Factory orders (Nov)
  • 10 a.m. ISM services (Dec)

Wednesday

  • 10:35 a.m. Crude inventories (Jan. 2)

Thursday

  • 8:30 a.m. Initial unemployment claims (Jan. 3)
  • 2 p.m. Consumer credit (Nov)

Friday

  • 8:30 a.m. Average workweek, hourly earnings, non-farm payrolls, unemployment rate (Dec)
  • 10 a.m. Wholesale inventories (Nov)

See Yahoo Finance’s page for what the market expects. Pretty much all of the numbers are considered likely to get worse, though the market may imagine it has priced in all this bad news already and decide to rally (the 40 percent shellacking we took last year is Exhibit A). It’s not like anybody will be surprised to learn November and December were train wrecks.

My prediction: those who try to outguess the market will be proved wrong. Except when they’re right.

no comments | Permalink | Tags:
Tom Mangan posted at 11:15 pm January 4th, 2009 |