The U.S Census Bureau reported that new orders for durable goods decreased $0.6 billion or 0.2% to $272.7B in August, this follows a 0.1% decrease in July. Total durable-goods orders are up 10.9% year over year. Orders for non-defense aircraft dragged down the headline number, plunging 18.5%, this was partially offset by a 31.2% increase in defense aircraft. Excluding transportation, “core” durable-goods orders increased by 0.2% in August. Bookings for motor vehicles increased slightly by 0.3% after a flat reading the previous month. Excluding defense, new orders decreased by 0.9%. Transportation equipment decreased $1.0B (-1.1%) in August and follows a 0.7% drop in July. New orders rose marginally in every major category except for fabricated metal parts. New orders for capital goods orders fell 0.8%, while non-defense capital goods dropped 2.7%. Orders for non-defense capital goods excluding aircraft or core capital goods orders, a proxy for business spending plans increased 1.3% in August. Core capital goods orders up 9.7% year over year. Shipments of core capital goods rose 0.3% in August after increasing 0.6% the previous month.

The U.S Census Bureau reported that sales of newly built homes soared 28.8% in August from a revised July rate of 532,000. The August seasonally adjusted annual rate of 685,000 is a 5-month high and is down a slight 0.1% from a year earlier. Regionally new home sales increased across the board led by the Northeast (+66.7%), then South (+29.4%), West (+27.5%), and Midwest (+16.7%). The average sales price for a new home sold in February was $521,800 down 6.3% from the previous month. The median price was $436,800, down 6.4% from July, but up 8.04% from a year ago. There were 461,000 new homes for sale as of the end of August a 22% drop from the previous month, this corresponds to 8.5 months of supply in inventory. The vast majority of the new homes for sale were either under construction (306,000) or not yet started (106,000).

The US Energy Information Administration reported US commercial crude oil stockpiles decreased by 0.2M barrels to 430.6M barrels (2% below the five-year average) for the week ending September 23rd. Crude oil refinery inputs averaged 15.8M barrels per day, a decrease of 604K barrels per day as compared to the previous week’s average. Gasoline inventories decreased by 2.4M barrels (6% below the five-year average), and distillate inventories increased by 2.9M barrels (20% below the five-year average). Refineries operated at 90.6% of their operable capacity. Gasoline production increased, averaging 9.6M barrels per day. Distillate fuel production decreased averaging, 5.0M barrels per day. Crude oil imports reported in at 6.4M barrels per day, a decrease of 0.5M barrels per day as compared to the previous week. Over the last four weeks, crude oil imports averaged 6.5M barrels per day, 5.6% more than the same period last year. Total motor gasoline imports (including both finished gasoline and gasoline blending components) averaged 525K barrels per day, and distillate fuel imports averaged 94K barrels per day. Total commercial petroleum inventories decreased by 8.9M barrels last week. Over the last four weeks the total products supplied averaged 19.7M barrels a day, 3.1% less than the same period last year. Motor gasoline product supplied averaged 8.6M barrels a day, 6.6% less than the same period last year. Distillate fuel product supplied averaged 3.6M barrels a day, down 9.7% from the same period last year. Jet fuel product supplied increased 2.6% when compared to the same four-week period last year.