(Nov 4): New orders for US-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 Department'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 non-defense 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 so-called core capital goods fell 0.1% instead of declining 0.3% as reported last month. Non-defence 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.

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