After the surprising 3.2% MoM surge in January, US durable goods orders were expected to slide in preliminary February data. However, in yet another recession-imminent-narrative crushing 'hard' data point, orders rose 0.9% MoM (-1.0% exp) and January was revised up from +3.2% MoM to +3.3% MoM...

Source: Bloomberg

The Commerce Department’s durable goods report showed commercial aircraft bookings, which are volatile from month to month, dropped 5% after nearly doubling in January. Boeing Co. reported 13 orders in February, down from 36 a month earlier.

Even more notably, core durable goods orders surged 0.7% MoM - the biggest MoM jump since March 2022...

Source: Bloomberg

This pushed the total durable goods orders back up near record highs...

Source: Bloomberg

Finally, Core capital goods shipments, a figure that is used to help calculate equipment investment in the government’s gross domestic product report, rose 0.9%, the most in a year.

Not exactly recessionary signaling. Of course, the first excuse out of every talking heads' mouth will be "well it's front-running Trump's tariffs... and won't be sustainable" - we shall see (and why didn't the forecasting analysts see that coming?).

The partisan 'soft' data to non-partisan 'hard' data decoupling continues to grow.