Courtesy of Mish.
On November 15, the Census Bureau released its monthly report on Manufacturing and Trade Inventories and Sales. Despite the fact that is it mid-November, we are just now getting data for September.
The census bureau headline reads “total business inventories/sales ratio based on seasonally adjusted data at the end of September was 1.38.” That’s a decline of 0.1 percentage points.
I went back through a number of charts to highlight major flaws inherent in superficial reporting on headline numbers.
Bloomberg Econoday saw things this way:
“Inventories proved tame in September, rising only 0.1 percent against a sharp 0.7 percent gain in sales that pulls the inventory-to-sales ratio one notch leaner to 1.38 from 1.39. High levels of inventories were a concern going into the fourth quarter but this morning’s very strong retail sales report may in fact point to the need to build inventories further.”
The Census Bureau posted this chart.
The above chart certainly does not reflect any need to build inventories. Here are some charts I produced from Fred, the St; Louis Fed data repository.
