Wholesale Trade and Inventories Not Enough to Change GDP Targets

Wholesale inventories rose by 0.8% in May. Bloomberg had a consensus estimate of 0.3%, and Dow Jones had a consensus of 0.4%.

On sales, May’s wholesale trade was up 3% to $449.8 billion from the revised April data. Still, that is down 3.8% from the May 2014 level. April’s preliminary estimate was revised upward $0.2 billion.

Sales of furniture and home furnishings were down 2.8%, while motor vehicle and motor vehicle parts and supplies were up 2.2%. Nondurable goods sales were up 0.7% from April, but were down 8.3% from last May. Sales of petroleum and petroleum products were up 4.3% from April.

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Inventories were also said to be up 0.8% at $581.9 billion at the end of May, as well as up by 5.0% from the May 2014 level. April’s preliminary estimate was revised upward by $0.1 billion. Inventory notes in the Census release were as follows:

• Inventories of computer and computer peripheral equipment and software were up 2.5%.
• Inventories of motor vehicle and motor vehicle parts and supplies were up 1.2%.
• Inventories of nondurable goods were up 1.2% from April and up 3.1% from last May.
• Inventories of petroleum and petroleum products were up 4.4%.
• And inventories of drugs and druggists’ sundries were up 2.7%.

The so-called inventories-to-sales ratio was 1.29 in May, up from 1.19 a year earlier.

With this being a May reading, it should have almost no impact on financial markets.