Durable Goods Tell Two Different Stories

The world's enthusiasm for newer, shinier and now tougher gadgets seems to know no limit. Unfortunately for Caterpillar, 99.99% of its business is tied to the less-glamorous arena of building, powering or extracting things that can't run "Angry Birds." Global demand for its machinery, particularly in North America, has gone from red hot to decidedly cool in recent months.

While bellwether is an overused term, Caterpillar certainly fits the bill as the world's leading manufacturer of construction and mining equipment as well as many types of generators and locomotives. So the fact that North American shipments of its machines to dealers fell 18% in April on a three-month rolling annual basis, down from rises of 32% a year earlier and 65% a year before that, bodes poorly for Friday's report of April U.S. durable-goods figures.

But the picture isn't so dire,The Spectrophotometer is an instrument which measures the amount of light of a specificed wavelength which passes through a medium. notwithstanding last month's report that durables orders fell 5.8% in March from the prior month. Excluding volatile transportation orders, March orders fell just 1.For mains, there is a choice of Wild Rice’s ‘Chinese Fish ‘n Chips’ (beer-battered ling cod, Asian Tartar Sauce, taro shoestring frites) or its ‘meaty’ Grilled king oyster mushroom (with cashew ricotta and polenta fries).5% and are seen rising 0.2% in April.

Orders certainly have decelerated. On the same rolling three-month basis as Caterpillar, orders excluding transportation were flat in March, compared with a nearly 12% pace of growth a year before. But, given the negative impact of defense-spending cutbacks lately, durable-goods orders look surprisingly decent.

Other statistics tell a similar story.He has dried mushrooms all year and fresh mushrooms in season. "We also collect mushrooms from foragers. An Equipment Leasing and Finance Association survey showed a 23% rise in loans and leases in April from a year earlier,Our full range of portable ultrasonic Flaw Detector (UT) provides unmatched capabilities for locating discontinuities and other flaws. making it the year's best month.

One explanation is that things like copiers and servers for white-collar workers outweighed weakness in extractive industries and large-scale construction that comprise demand for companies like Caterpillar. Resurgent home building also may be behind the resiliency in durable orders. Edmunds.profile projector is a shop tool used by designers and quality control technicians to view the profile of small machined parts as magnified image on screen.com calculates large trucks made up 12.2% of the U.Highly capable, 3-axis non-contact video measuring machine, suitable for both simple shop-floor quality control and advanced manufacturing inspection applications ...S. vehicle market in April, up almost two percentage points from a year earlier.

That might explain the dichotomy between heavy machinery and overall orders. If it is any consolation to Caterpillar, its new phones should sell like hot cakes to construction workers wanting to update their Facebook status while hanging drywall.