US Wholesale Inventories Rose 0.3% in June

U.S. wholesale inventories unexpectedly rose in June on gains in stocks of farm products and other nondurable goods, suggesting an upward revision to the second-quarter economic growth estimate.

The Commerce Department said on Tuesday that wholesale inventories increased 0.3 percent after having been initially estimated as unchanged. Inventories for May were revised up to show a 0.2 percent rise instead of the previously reported 0.1 percent gain.

Economists had forecast wholesale inventories as unchanged in June in line with the government’s estimate last month. That unchanged reading was incorporated in the advance second-quarter gross domestic product estimate published last month.

The component of wholesale inventories that goes into the calculation of GDP – wholesale stocks excluding autos – increased 0.3 percent in June. That would imply a mild upward revision to the second-quarter GDP growth estimate.

An outright drop in inventory investment subtracted almost 1.2 percentage points from GDP growth in the second quarter, restricting the rise in output to a tepid 1.2 percent annualized rate. Inventories have weighed on GDP growth since the second quarter of 2015 as businesses sell piles of unwanted goods.

In June, wholesale stocks of farm products increased 4.0 percent after rising 6.2 percent in May. Wholesale inventories of drugs surged 4.9 percent after declining 3.8 percent in May. Auto inventories dipped 0.1 percent in June.

via Reuters

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Alfonso Esparza

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.
Alfonso Esparza