One concern for the US economy going forward continue to be the weak pace of capital goods orders. This is a phrase that describes the machinery and equipment that companies need in order to upgrade their factories and their production capacity. Durable goods are any goods meant to last more than 3 years, so we have to go to a very specific part of the report to get the capital goods orders figure. It is under Capital Goods Order excluding defense and airplanes - since we don't want purchases for the military and the large capital goods (airplanes) skewing the metric. So, what do we see over the last 3 months? Well, orders for capital goods were down 1.1% in September, after rising 0.4% in August, and being down a 3.5% (highlighted in the images above). You can also see how keeping aircraft in the figure skews things as capital goods ex. military rose 6.9%. Here is a chart of shipments (not orders) of these capital goods and we are certainly seeing weakness: (h/t to ZeroHedge)The question then is... are companies not confident in the economy enough to purchase more machinery and equipment? For a recovery to gather pace, this is one of the key metrics to watch, and so far it is not pointing to much optimism among firms. Something to think about.- Nick