Wholesale Trade Posts Larger Than Expected Gain

Wholesale trade figures for the month of August were released by the U.S. Department of Commerce Thursday morning. The reading came out at 0.7%, beating the Bloomberg estimate of 0.3%. The previous reading was revised to 0.3% from 0.1%.

The total sales for merchant wholesalers were recorded at $453.9 billion and inventories read at $538 billion. Sales for durable goods were up 0.1% from the previous month, and up 7% from August of 2013. Inventories for durable goods were up 0.8% from the previous month and 8.5% on the year. Sales of metals and minerals, except petroleum, were up 1.6% from the previous month.

Sales of nondurable goods were down 1.3% from July, but they were up 4.7% from August 2013. Inventories for nondurable goods were up 0.5% from the previous month and 6.9% on the year. Petroleum and petroleum products were down 4.2%, and farm product raw materials were down 3.8% from the previous month. Inventories of drugs and druggists’ sundries were up 1.6% from July.

Based on seasonally adjusted data for the month of August, the inventories to sales ratio for merchant wholesalers was 1.19 compared to the previous year of 1.16.

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