Courtesy of Zero Hedge:
Moments ago Caterpillar reported its latest monthly retail sales statistics and the numbers have never been worse: not only is the dead CAT bounce in US sales finally over, tumbling -8% Y/Y, after a -4% decline in September and hugging the flatline for the past few months, but sales elsewhere around the globe were a complete debacle: Asia/Pacific (mostly China) was down -28%, a dramatic drop from the -17% a month ago, EAME dropping -13%, and Latin America down -36%…
… but global retail sales just posted a massive -16% drop in the past month, after dropping 9% a year ago and another 12% in 2013, this was the biggest annual drop since early 2010. As the chart below shows, CAT has now suffered a record 35 months, or nearly 3 years, of consecutive declining annual retail sales – something unprecedented in company history, and set to surpass the “only” 19 months of declining during the great financial crisis by a factor of two!