FX.co ★ U.S. Business Inventories Unexpectedly Unchanged In January

The Commerce Department disclosed on Thursday that there was no considerable change to business inventories in the United States for January. This revelation was unexpected, as preceding December had seen a marginal rise of 0.3%.

Contrary to economists' predictions, business inventories did not experience a 0.2% increase as anticipated. Instead, they compared to the 0.4% growth observed in the prior month.

An assessment of different sectors showed a 0.4% rise in retail inventories. However, this was counterbalanced by a reduction in wholesale inventories by 0.3% and manufacturing inventories by 0.1%.

The report also highlighted that business sales experienced a significant drop of 1.3% in January. This was a stark contrast to the situation in December when sales volume remained stable. A 1.7% decrease was observed in wholesale sales, while both retail and manufacturing sales saw an approximately equal slump of around 1.0% to 1.1%.

Given these figures, the overall ratio of business inventories to sales slightly increased to 1.39 in January, up from 1.38 in December.