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retail inventory

Inventory Flood Continues Just As Consumers Tap Out

By |2022-05-27T19:53:48-04:00May 27th, 2022|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

If it continues to play out the same way, it would be all the worst scenarios lumped together all at the same time. A real unfortunate convergence, yet one that has been entirely predictable. Consumers reaching their absolute spending limits. Warehouse and storage capacity nationwide dwindling to long-time lows, leaving firms no options to store inbound goods. And, of course, [...]

Historic Inventory Continued In March, But Is It All Price Illusion, Too?

By |2022-04-27T19:41:56-04:00April 27th, 2022|Bonds, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

The Census Bureau today released its advanced estimates for March trade. These include, among other accounts like imports and exports, preliminary results reported by retailers and wholesalers. That means, for our purposes, inventories. Oh my, was there ever more inventory. It was, apparently, widely expected that following an avalanche of goods building up over the previous five months the situation [...]

FOMC Goes With Unemployment Rate While This Huge Number Happens To Far More Relevant Economic Data

By |2022-01-26T17:58:07-05:00January 26th, 2022|Bonds, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

The first time I can consciously remember using the term landmine was probably here in February 2019. I had described the same process play out several times before, I had just never applied that term. There was all sorts of market chaos in the final two months of 2018, including a full-on stock market correction, believe it or not, leaving [...]

Black Friday to Thanksgiving Weekend, Discontinuities Aside

By |2017-11-28T16:41:10-05:00November 28th, 2017|Markets|

I was expecting quite a bit more, but perhaps should not be surprised at what was actually delivered. The National Retail Federation (NRF) after delaying its Black Friday retail spending estimates updated them later today for the now designated Thanksgiving Weekend. These new figures capture spending activity on both Thanksgiving Day itself as well as the much-discussed Cyber Monday. The [...]

Cyber Monday Was Great, But Inventory Looks At More Than Online Holiday Shopping

By |2017-11-28T12:13:02-05:00November 28th, 2017|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

As expected, Cyber Monday hit records all across the retail industry. According to Adobe Insights, sales recorded by online outlets, including those of traditional brick and mortar stores, hit $6.59 billion. That’s a record not just for a Cyber Monday but any single day in the internet’s two decades of mainstream usage. It was, Adobe said, a gain of 16.8% [...]

Nearly Two Years of Manufacturing Contraction, And No Progress In Inventory

By |2016-07-19T16:41:26-04:00July 19th, 2016|Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

Manufacturing sales were reported Friday to have declined 2.3% year-over-year in May, following a 4.7% contraction in April. Since sales in May 2015 were almost 6% less than May 2014, the manufacturing sector counts almost 8% less in revenue across two years of contraction. The worst part is, again, the time. In seasonally-adjusted terms, estimated sales of $456 billion in [...]

Almost Two Years Already, Inventory Indicates Still More Manufacturing Recession To Come In Terms of Time And Depth

By |2016-04-13T18:32:03-04:00April 13th, 2016|Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

Given the revisions to wholesale sales (downward) and inventories (upward), we knew that the overall inventory imbalance for the whole supply chain would be pushed up somewhat. Total Business Inventory to Sales was 1.41 in February, the second consecutive month at that extreme. And it really is an extreme since the last time we saw such imbalance was November 2008 [...]

Redefining Anomaly Through Inventory

By |2015-06-15T17:10:25-04:00June 15th, 2015|Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

While the latest business inventory estimates are not yet updated for May, only through April, there is still a great deal of consistency provided by the top to bottom shifts in the economic supply chain. It usually takes an inventory build of tremendous disproportion to trigger the kinds of cutbacks and downstream negative pressures that amount to a recession. The [...]

The Old School Ingredients

By |2015-04-14T15:27:29-04:00April 14th, 2015|Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

For the most part, retailers have been far more cautious about inventory than their wholesale counterparts. I don’t doubt that those two processes are actually related, with the inventory appetite swinging to wholesalers almost by default, but circumstances now dictate either a conscious break with that conduct or a convergence. With inventories already far too deep on the wholesale level, [...]

Inventory Cycling Through Prices?

By |2014-09-10T12:31:41-04:00September 10th, 2014|Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

The wholesale trade figures still confound both the “rebound” narrative and the drastic revisions of GDP made in July. The broader context of wholesale trade remains as it has been since early 2013, as although growth appears to be increasing it is doing so at a deficient rate. That counts for both inventory and sales, though there is, I believe, [...]

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