Just a quick note before I head out for the weekend. In the face of oil peaking at $135 per barrel in recent days we have seen many of the airlines cancel planned deliveries of new planes they were going to add to their fleets over the next few years. Those plane orders are now unnecessary as the carriers are cutting capacity.

The big point here is that investors often go gaga over industrial suppliers' backlog. The longer the backlog the more predictable their revenue stream over the longer term, or so the investors would have you believe. Due to long lead times customers do have to place orders far in advance, often years ahead of time. Hence, the suppliers report their backlogs to investors to give them an idea of future business.

All of this appears to be very important, except for the crucial point that a customer (an airline for instance) can simply cancel their orders whenever they want since they are not binding. A large backlog may look really nice, until customers start canceling orders.

Now, would I prefer a large backlog to a small backlog? Of course. That said, I think backlogs in general are overrated on Wall Street since the orders are not binding. As a result, backlogs don't always translate into revenues.