Reporting Note
The Census Bureau announced today it would scrap the advance reports for January and February. It will return to its normal schedule in March.
The Advance Economic Indicators report on inventories shows a steep rise in wholesale and retail inventories.
Advance Wholesale Inventories
Wholesale inventories for December, adjusted for seasonal variations but not for price changes, were estimated at an end-of-month level of $661.8 billion, up 1.1 percent from November 2018, and were up 7.3 percent from December 2017. The October 2018 to November 2018 percentage change was revised from up 0.3 percent to up 0.4 percent.
Advance Retail Inventories
Retail inventories for December, adjusted for seasonal variations but not for price changes, were estimated at an end-of-month level of $651.1 billion, up 0.9 percent from November 2018, and were up 3.9 percent from December 2017. The October 2018 to November 2018 percentage change was unrevised from the preliminary estimate of down 0.4 percent.
Sales
Unless sales pick up, wholesalers and retailers are going to be sitting on a lot of inventory.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
Please… This whole Tariff debate is just a dog and pony show and being used as negotiating tactic. The deadline was pushed out again,.
No actual Tariffs have been imposed on anything but last year corporations were stocking up on supplies due to this whole media driven Tariff debate.
uh there are tariffs on $200B of chinese goods and steel/aluminium tariffs.
This is not surprising. With tariffs going into effect in January, an inventory build in December, and an increase in the balance of trade deficit in December were to be expected. In January, those should unwind. It may be another month or so before we starting getting more stable economic data.
Stock market tanking probably slowed spending during the holidays. December is backward looking so I’m not sure how that is a leading indicator. 2019 will be an inventory runoff and overhang.