US Wholesale Inventories Increased in March

May 9, 2017 Share Print 0

U.S. wholesale inventories increased in March amid flat sales, confounding the government’s initial estimate of a modest dip.

The Commerce Department said on Tuesday wholesale inventories rose 0.2 percent after increasing 0.3 percent in February. The department reported last month that wholesale inventories slipped 0.1 percent in March.

Auto inventories increased 1.9 percent. Wholesale stocks of electrical goods surged 2.3 percent, the biggest gain since January 2015. Professional equipment inventories rose 1.0 percent in March.

The component of wholesale inventories that goes into the calculation of gross domestic product – wholesale stocks excluding autos – were unchanged in March.

A report last week showed inventories at factories were flat in March after rising 0.2 percent in February.

Inventory investment subtracted 0.93 percentage point from GDP in the first quarter, helping to hold down the economy to a 0.7 percent annualized growth pace, the weakest performance in three years. Inventories had contributed to GDP growth for two straight quarters.

via Reuters

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Alfonso Esparza

Senior Currency Analyst at Market Pulse

Alfonso Esparza specializes in macro forex strategies for North American and major currency pairs. Upon joining OANDA in 2007, Alfonso Esparza established the MarketPulseFX blog and he has since written extensively about central banks and global economic and political trends. Alfonso has also worked as a professional currency trader focused on North America and emerging markets. He has been published by The MarketWatch, Reuters, the Wall Street Journal and The Globe and Mail, and he also appears regularly as a guest commentator on networks including Bloomberg and BNN. He holds a finance degree from the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESM) and an MBA with a specialization on financial engineering and marketing from the University of Toronto.