Durable Goods Orders vs S&P 500
Durable Goods Orders (FRED:DGORDER) is the Census Bureau's monthly M3 advance release on new orders for manufactured goods with a useful life of three years or more; SPY is the S&P 500 ETF. The March 2026 advance print landed at $318.9 billion, +0.8 percent month-over-month, snapping three consecutive monthly declines, while ex-transportation orders rose +0.9 percent for the twelfth straight gain.
Also known as: Durable Goods Orders (durable goods, durables) · S&P 500 ETF (SPY) (ETF_SPY, S&P 500, SPX, SP500)
Why This Comparison Matters
Durable Goods Orders (FRED:DGORDER) is the Census Bureau's monthly M3 advance release on new orders for manufactured goods with a useful life of three years or more; SPY is the S&P 500 ETF. The March 2026 advance print landed at $318.9 billion, +0.8 percent month-over-month, snapping three consecutive monthly declines, while ex-transportation orders rose +0.9 percent for the twelfth straight gain. Reading the headline series alone is misleading because nondefense aircraft orders alone moved -21.1 percent in the same release.
What the M3 advance release actually measures
The Census Bureau publishes two durable goods releases each month: the advance release (DGORDER on FRED) typically four weeks after the reference month, and the final release roughly one week later as part of the broader M3 manufacturers' shipments, inventories, and orders report. The series covers approximately 92 industries grouped into seven categories, with transportation equipment representing the most volatile component because Boeing widebody orders and military aircraft contracts arrive in lumps of $5 to $40 billion in single months. The Census Bureau's seasonal adjustment treats transportation as a separate category specifically because of this lumpiness, and most professional readers ignore the headline DGORDER print in favor of the ex-transportation series. The advance release covers approximately 65 percent of the final M3 universe, with the remainder added in the subsequent full release.
The relevant policy desk is the Federal Reserve's Industrial Production team within the Board's Division of Research and Statistics, which uses M3 nondefense capital goods ex-aircraft (the 'core capex' series, FRED:NEWORDER) as the primary input to its quarterly equipment investment forecast. The pair captures the difference between equity-market price action on the S&P 500 and the order-flow data that ultimately drives the equipment-investment line in nominal GDP. When SPY rallies without core capex support, the rally is being carried by multiple expansion or services-sector earnings rather than by the manufacturing-capex cycle that the durable goods report tracks. The Atlanta Fed GDPNow model gives durable goods a roughly 12 percent weight in the equipment-investment subcomponent of its quarterly nowcast, which is why a single durable goods print can move the GDPNow estimate by 10 to 30 basis points.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Why is the headline durable goods number so volatile?+
Boeing alone has produced four single-month durable goods swings of more than 20 percent since 2010, including the August 2014 +22.6 percent print (Boeing booked 324 aircraft at Farnborough), the July 2014 -18.4 percent print (post-Farnborough reversion), the April 2017 -2.1 percent on Boeing 737 MAX disclosure, and the December 2024 +9.2 percent on post-strike catch-up bookings. The Census Bureau separates transportation specifically because of this lumpiness, and the ex-transportation and ex-aircraft series provide a much cleaner signal of underlying business investment intent. Defense capital goods orders add a second layer of lumpiness, with single-month swings of 30 percent on lumpy contract awards that should always be filtered before drawing capex-cycle conclusions from the headline release.
What is core capex and why does it matter?+
Core capex is the FRED series NEWORDER, nondefense capital goods orders ex-aircraft, also called the 'core capex' or 'business equipment intent' series. It typically runs at $73 to $76 billion per month in 2026 dollars and has a three-month moving-average correlation with quarterly equipment investment in real GDP of +0.71 since 1992. The series leads equipment investment in nominal GDP by approximately one to two quarters, which is why it is the Federal Reserve Board Industrial Production team's primary input to the quarterly equipment investment forecast. The March 2026 print at $74 billion marked the third consecutive month above that threshold, the longest streak since the AI-capex acceleration began in mid-2023.
How did durable goods orders behave in 2008-2009?+
Headline DGORDER fell from $232.5 billion in July 2008 to $158.2 billion in March 2009, a peak-to-trough decline of -32.0 percent. Ex-transportation orders fell -27.7 percent over the same window, and core capex orders fell -30.1 percent. SPY fell -54.2 percent from October 9, 2007 to March 9, 2009. The lead-lag was asymmetric: the SPY peak preceded the durable orders peak by nine months, but the SPY trough and the durable orders trough were essentially coincident at March 2009. The pattern is structural: equity markets price discount-rate inflections within hours, while order books require firms to actually place contracts, which lags the trough by exactly the time it takes to move from board-level approval to executed purchase order.
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