In July 2025, US factory orders decreased by 1.3%, slightly better than the anticipated decline of 1.4%. The previous month had seen a larger drop of 4.8%. <\/p>\n
Excluding transportation, factory orders increased by 0.6%, an improvement over the prior month’s 0.4% rise. Durable goods orders matched preliminary expectations with a 2.8% decrease. <\/p>\n
Durables excluding defense also aligned with preliminary expectations, showing a 2.5% decrease. Non-defense capital goods orders, excluding aircraft, grew by 1.1%, consistent with previous preliminary data.<\/p>\n
This factory orders report from July is much better than the headline -1.3% figure suggests. We’re looking at the core numbers, like the +1.1% jump in non-defense capital goods orders, which shows businesses are still spending on equipment. This points to a resilient economy, pushing back on the recession fears we saw earlier in the summer of 2025.<\/p>\n
This kind of strength complicates things for the Federal Reserve. After the last CPI report for July 2025 showed inflation still hovering at 3.4%, this data gives the Fed less reason to consider the rate cuts markets were hoping for. We should be positioning for interest rates to remain elevated, so buying puts on bond ETFs like TLT could hedge against yields ticking higher.<\/p>\n
For equity indexes like the S&P 500, this report is a green light after the choppy trading we saw in August. We see value in selling out-of-the-money puts on industrial and technology sector ETFs, as this business spending data directly supports their earnings outlook. With the VIX likely to fall from its recent highs above 17, selling volatility looks like a favorable strategy.<\/p>\n
This situation feels similar to the sentiment shift we witnessed back in 2023, when the market realized the economy could handle higher rates without collapsing. That period saw a sustained rally in growth stocks and a steady decline in market fear. Therefore, buying longer-dated call options on major tech names or the Nasdaq 100 index to ride a potential trend could be a smart move.<\/p>\n
Create your live VT Markets account<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0start trading<\/a>\u00a0now. <\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" US factory orders fell 1.3% in July 2025; core capital goods orders rose by 1.1%.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":62,"featured_media":17023,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-live-updates"],"acf":{"acf_article_selection_author":null},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vtmarkets.com\/en-asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vtmarkets.com\/en-asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vtmarkets.com\/en-asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vtmarkets.com\/en-asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/62"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vtmarkets.com\/en-asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30146"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.vtmarkets.com\/en-asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30146\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vtmarkets.com\/en-asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17023"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vtmarkets.com\/en-asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vtmarkets.com\/en-asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vtmarkets.com\/en-asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}