Nov 4 Reuters New orders for U.S.manufactured goods fell for a second straight month in September, and business spending on equipment appears to have pulled back in the third quarter.

Factory orders dropped 0.5 after a downwardly revised 0.8 decrease in August, the Commerce Department39;s Census Bureau said on Monday. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast factory orders would fall 0.5 after a previously reported 0.2 decline in August.

Factory orders were unchanged from a year earlier.

The government also reported that orders for nondefense capital goods excluding aircraft, which are seen as a measure of business spending plans on equipment, increased 0.7 in September instead of the previously reported 0.5.

Shipments of these socalled core capital goods fell 0.1 instead of declining 0.3 as reported last month. Nondefense capital goods orders dropped 4.4, instead of by 4.5 as initially estimated.

Shipments of those goods decreased 3.4 rather than 3.6, as initially estimated. These shipments go into the calculation of the business spending on equipment component in the gross domestic product report. That suggests a slowing in business investment in equipment in the third quarter.

Reporting by Ann Saphir; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama

Source Reuters