The Durable Goods advanced report for July was released on Wednesday and the headline number surprised to the upside. This helped the market tack on some further gains beyond Tuesday's big advance. Besides its effect on a day's action in the stock market, the Durable Goods report is useful for seeing how tech in aggregate is performing. As of this report, the situation is mixed. I always focus on two particular measures: shipments and new orders. In July, the two measures were not consistent and this is worrisome. Let's see how it played out in July. Shipments -- I generally give less importance to Shipments since this is a backward looking measure reflecting orders that have been confirmed, manufactured and shipped. It's similar to earnings reports -- it's good to know but the data is in the past and we're more interested in the future. The following chart shows how July shipments looked for the overall tech sector: Results were actually quite good and,