News USA :
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) - Orders for big-ticket U.S. items sank 5.7% in March, mainly because of fewer jetliner bookings, but demand softened for most durable goods last month. Economists surveyed by MarketWatch had expected orders to drop 3.2%. Stripping out the volatile transportation sector, orders fell a smaller 1.4%, the Commerce Department said Wednesday. Orders for core capital goods, a key barometer of private-sector business investment, edged up 0.2% after a 4.8% decline in February. Shipments of core capital goods, a category used to calculate quarterly economic growth, rose 0.3% in March. Durable orders for February, meanwhile, were revised down to show a 4.3% gain from a prior reading of a 5.6% increase. The latest report suggests that activity in the manufacturing sector cooled off a bit toward the end of the first quarter, a trend evident in other industry data.
