Tag Archive: wholesale inventory

Inventory Flood Continues Just As Consumers Tap Out

2022-05-31

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2022-05-31

If it continues to play out the same way, it would be all the worst scenarios lumped together all at the same time. A real unfortunate convergence, yet one that has been entirely predictable. Consumers reaching their absolute spending limits.

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Historic Inventory Continued In March, But Is It All Price Illusion, Too?

2022-04-28

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2022-04-28

The Census Bureau today released its advanced estimates for March trade. These include, among other accounts like imports and exports, preliminary results reported by retailers and wholesalers. That means, for our purposes, inventories. Oh my, was there ever more inventory. It was, apparently, widely expected that following an avalanche of goods building up over the previous five months the situation might calm down a touch.

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Concocting Inventory

2022-04-11

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2022-04-11

The Census Bureau provided some updated inventory estimates about wholesalers, including its annual benchmark revisions. As to the latter, not a whole lot was changed, a small downward revision right around the peak (early 2021) of the supply shock which is consistent with the GDP estimates for when inventory levels were shrinking fast.

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FOMC Goes With Unemployment Rate While This Huge Number Happens To Far More Relevant Economic Data

2022-01-29

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2022-01-29

The first time I can consciously remember using the term landmine was probably here in February 2019. I had described the same process play out several times before, I had just never applied that term. There was all sorts of market chaos in the final two months of 2018, including a full-on stock market correction, believe it or not, leaving the inflation and recovery narrative in near complete tatters.

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An Economy Dividing By Inventory And Labor

2021-09-30

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2021-09-30

Is it delta COVID? Or the widely reported labor shortage? Something has created a soft patch in the presumed indestructible US economy still hopped up on Uncle Sam’s deposits made earlier in the year. And yet, there’s a nagging feeling over how this time, like all previous times, just might be too good to be true, too.

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That’s Probably Why Only Half a “V”

2020-07-31

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2020-07-31

IHS Markit US Composite, 2018-2020
Why only half a “V?” If the latest PMI’s are anywhere close to accurate, and they don’t have to be all that close, then the production side of the economy may have stalled out somewhere nearer the trough of this contraction. The promise of May’s big payroll report surprise has dissipated in more than just the bond market.

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More Points For, And Pointing To, The Midpoint

2019-10-29

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2019-10-29

Wholesale Sales & Inventory, SA 2016-2019
It’s not surprising that the Census Bureau would report another weird sideways trend in wholesale sales. After all, the agency has already produced that kind of pattern in the related data for durable goods. For reasons that aren’t going to be explained, economic activity across the supply chain from producers to consumers has been curtailed. That hasn’t mean outright shrinking in seasonally adjusted forms, but it also doesn’t mean growth,...

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Wholesale: No Acceleration, No Liquidation

2017-07-16

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2017-07-16

Wholesale Sales and Inventory, NSA
In the same way as durable goods orders and US imports, wholesale sales in May 2017 were up somewhat unadjusted but down for the third straight month according the seasonally-adjusted series. As with those other two, the difference is one of timing. In other words, combining the two sets, seasonal and not, we are left to interpret a possible recent slowing in activity.

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