A spate of economic reports show encouraging signs of growth.
Nondefense new orders for capital goods, excluding aircraft, rose 0.3% in April, to $81.2 billion, the Commerce Department said on Tuesday, the second month of increases after the agency revised March’s rise to 1.5% from 0.6%.
Tuesday’s data “provides some indication that business capital investment activity might be on the mend,” TD Securities deputy chief economist Millan Mulraine told Reuters.
“Business spending has slackened as a sharp decline in energy prices forced oilfield companies, including Schlumberger and Halliburton, to slash their capital expenditure budgets,” Reuters wrote. “Investment has also been undermined by a strong dollar, which has squeezed the profits of multinational corporations.”
Shipments of manufactured durable goods rose 1.6% in April to $80.2 billion, the Commerce Department said. Unfilled orders increased $1.1 billion, or 0.1%, to $763.3 billion. Inventories increased $0.3 billion, or 0.2%, to $177.4 billion.
Separately, The Conference Board said that its Consumer Confidence Index increased moderately in May, after declining in April. The Index now stands at 95.4, up from 94.3 in April.
“While current conditions in the second quarter appear to be improving, consumers still remain cautious about the short-term outlook,” the Conference Board’s director of economic indicators Lynn Franco said in a press release.
In other economic indicators, new home sales in April increased 6.8% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 517,000 units, according to the Commerce Department. One night stands and finding a spanish hookup on the Internet is one of the best ways to meet someone that you would like to spend the rest of your life with. I have found a way to meet singles for free online, and I have also discovered how to meet singles that will actually take you out on a date. March’s sales pace was revised to 484,000 units from the previously reported 481,000 units.
Meanwhile, the S&P/Case-Shiller composite index, a measure of home prices in 20 metropolitan areas, rose 5% percent from a year ago.