Beat the street: durable goods; weekly jobless claims; Palantir shares

(Partial Video Transcript)

OpenAI shake-up sees Altman back as CEO

Hello, I'm Angeline Ong, and welcome to beat the street, the show that gives you all the tradeable news and data you need ahead of the Wall Street Open. Now, coming up, stock caution as investors look to revive the November rally as they eye the December Federal Reserve (Fed) meeting as well.

And NVIDIA, the US curbs: the impact of that is overshadowing forecasts. And Altman is back, watching Microsoft after OpenAI founder Sam Altman returned as chief executive of the AI market leader days after being fired.

Well, good afternoon to you. I'm Angeline Ong, and welcome to this new edition of beat the street. Just getting some breaking news crossing the headlines for you right now. We've got durable goods orders looking out for negative 3.1%. What we actually got was negative 5.4%.

Durable goods orders down

Durable goods are a very interesting one to look out for because it is released by the US Census Bureau measures the cost of orders received by manufacturers for durable goods, which means goods planned to last for three years or more, excluding the defence sector. So, they are key for the manufacturing industry and also a forward indicator for the US economy.

Just also wanting to update you on jobless claims as well. This is for the week ending 18 November 2023. We were looking out, this is the Reuters poll, 226,000. What we actually got was lower than expected, 209,000. Not seeing a huge amount of reaction on the markets as we speak to checking the Wall Street for you, which mirrors the Dow Jones industrials.

Also checking on the US dollar basket for you. Not much of a reaction there. Let's cross live to Chris Vecchio now from tastylive in New York. tastylive, of course, is part of IG.

US economic prospects not promising

AO: Chris, what are your early thoughts on these numbers?

CV: The durable goods orders are certainly worse than anticipated, and that's another knock against what's been a resilient US consumer thus far. The retail sales figures last week were a little bit better than expected, but much of that improvement, at least relative to expectations, was driven by what was happening at the pump, that gasoline expenditures.

The durable goods orders here aren't that great to look at, and quite frankly, neither are the continuing claims data. While they did beat expectations, it's worth noting that they're more than 25% above their low earlier this year.

When you go back through US economic history, there has never been a recession that has not been preceded by anything other than a 25% rise in continuing claims.

The writing's coming together on the wall that the economic prospects in the near-term future for the US economy are beginning to dim. I know that the market is very juiced up right now on this idea that the Fed does not need to raise rates anymore, but it's of my opinion that it's quickly becoming for a bad reason.

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