Daily Economy

Orders for nondefense aircraft plunged 70.7 percent in July after surging 129.3 percent in June. Aircraft orders tend to be extremely volatile. Despite efforts to adjust for seasonal patterns, the annual air show in Paris can result in huge swings in orders in some years. The plunge in aircraft orders pulled total new orders at…

New-home sales fell 9.4 percent in July to a 571,000 seasonally adjusted annual rate from 630,000 in June. The four major regions of the country had widely differing performances in July, with two regions posting sharp, double-digit declines, one posting a small decline, and one posting a gain. Specifically, the largest region, the South —…

The Index of Consumer Sentiment from the University of Michigan rose in early August, driven by a jump in expectations about the future of the economy. The overall index came in at 97.6 in the first half of August versus 93.4 at the end of July, a rise of 4.5 percent. From a year ago,…

Surveys from the New York and Philadelphia Federal Reserve Banks point to robust economic activity and upbeat expectations about the future in their regional economies. The Empire State Manufacturing Survey’s general-business-conditions index shows a net 25.2 percent of respondents said conditions were improving in August. That is a 15.4 percentage-point gain over the 9.8 percent…