New orders for manufactured goods decreased $0.4 billion or 0.1 percent to $309.1 billion in April. This followed a 1.7 percent March increase, but was the third decline in the last four months. Excluding the volatile transportation sector, new orders increased 1.9 percent, the fourth increase in the last five months. For the first four months of 1996, new orders were up by 3.0 percent from the same period last year.

Shipments rose for the third month in a row, increasing by $5.2 billion or 1.7 percent to $309.9 billion. This followed a 0.3 percent increase in March. Year to date, shipments are 2.5 percent higher than the same period a year ago.

Order backlogs declined by $0.8 billion or 0.2 percent to $479.0 billion, following a 1.0 percent March increase. This was the first decline in unfilled orders since last August. The orders-to-shipments ratio was 2.84, down from 2.86 in March.

Inventories in April increased $0.2 billion to $421.7 billion, the eighteenth increase in the last nineteen months. The inventories-to-shipments ratio was 1.36, down from 1.38 in March.

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Also today, Mitsubishi Bank/Schroder-Werthiem reported that week-to-week same-store sales at the retail chains they survey were down by 2.2 percent in the week ending June 1. This follows a sequence of weekly changes of +3.0, -4.0, +1.9, -2.1, and +1.8 percent -- a compounded net change of -1.8 percent over the past six weeks. Last week, Mitsubishi predicted that May chain store sales would show a gain of 5 percent. If this was supposed to be with respect to April, it didn't happen. Maybe they meant with respect to May a year ago.

Byline: Lafferty (MF Merlin)