New orders for U.S. made durable goods were largely flat month-over-month at $338.6B in August, following two consecutive monthly increases and compared to market forecasts for a 0.4% decrease. Excluding transportation, durable goods orders went up by 0.3%, below the expected 0.6% gain. Meanwhile, orders for non-defense capital goods excluding aircraft, a closely watched proxy for business spending plans, grew by 1.6%, topping market forecasts for a 0.5% advance.
Stock futures were already off their highs of the morning before the report and have continued lower. The initial reaction, however, was a short-lived drop, then pop, in the SPX futures.
Jason Meshnick, CMT, is the CEO of TheStreet Pro. Jason also started TheStreet's Filthy Rich Animal newsletter for newer investors. If you're not on the list, you can click here to subscribe.
Jason has over 30 years of industry experience across Wall Street, Fintech, university-level teaching, and financial journalism.
20 Years in Fintech
Before joining TheStreet, Jason spent nearly 20 years in FinTech, developing dynamically generated AI investment analyses. His work was available at Schwab, TD Ameritrade, Fidelity, ETrade, and nearly every major online broker in the US and Canada. However, his real passion arose when he was asked to write a weekly educational investing newsletter for his coworkers. Topics included why vampires are so rich and what car racing can teach you about investing. These have been republished in Filthy Rich Animal. Learning about investing should be fun!
Jason created the Fear & Greed Index for CNN Business. Although he jokes that it's his claim to no fame (it's famous, he's not), the model for understanding investor behavior has become incredibly popular and is used by everyone from hedge funds to individual investors.
Lecturing at the University Level
Teaching his coworkers led to a role at CU Boulder, where Jason taught classes in Investments and Corporate Finance. He's no longer teaching full-semester classes but continues to lecture on technical analysis and other investing topics.
10 Years of Wall Street Trading Experience
Jason spent a decade working on Wall Street as a trader and market maker, where he learned all about market microstructure and investor psychology. During his first five years on the Street, he traded mostly closed-end funds and utility stocks. Later, as a market maker, he managed large caps like ExxonMobil, Texas Instruments, Disney, American Express, and Wells Fargo.
When Not Thinking About Markets
Jason’s other passion is cars. He earned the distinction of being the slowest SCCA road racing champion in recent history when he won his region's Spec Miata class despite having never led a race. Jason knows more about old sports cars than anybody has any right to and is always energized by a drive in his classic Porsche 911.
He is Editor-at-Large for Autoblog, and his writing on cars can be found here.
Jason is also a passionate skier. He taught skiing at Vermont's Mount Snow for six seasons when he was younger. While Jason lives in Colorado he prefers Utah's fluffier snow.
Jason spends his spare time with his wife in Boulder, Colorado, and frequently visits his kids in college.
