Cold showers in late April

Zero for two on good news this morning. This drags the good news diffusion index down to 31.3 thus far in April. And, with only the advance report on Q1 GDP and last month’s personal income and outlays left to go, I’d have to bet that the index dips below 30 by the time we wrap up the month.

Sales of new one-family houses in March 2009 were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 356,000. This is 0.6% below the revised February 2009 estimate of 358,000.
New orders for manufactured durable goods in March decreased $1.3 billion or 0.8 percent to $161.2 billion.

Deep in the bowels of the home sales report, there were only 2,000 fewer sales in March than in the unexpected February spike in sales. In addition, both the number of homes on sale at the end of March and the months worth of sales they represented continued to edge down.

There was no such acorn as a reward for rooting around in the durable goods report. Orders, shipments, and unfilled orders all fell. Inventories fell by a smaller percent than shipments, implying no progress on working down inventories in durable goods manufacturing.