July Wholesale Inventories Decline, Commerce Says
nventories at U.S. wholesalers fell 0.1% in July, the Commerce Department said Thursday, turning around 17 straight rises in stockpiles.
The increase brought the total value of inventories to $352 billion, Commerce said, and followed a revised 0.4% gain a month earlier that had originally been reported at 0.7%.
Analysts had forecast a 0.6% increase, Bloomberg reported.
The inventory-to-sales ratio, which measures the amount of time wholesale goods went unsold, fell to 1.18 months from 1.19 months in June.
Wholesale inventories account for about one-fourth of total business stockpiles.
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