Updated: 08-May-08 10:17 ET

March Wholesale Inventories

Updated: 08-May-08 10:17 ET

Highlights

Key Factors

Big Picture

• Wholesale inventories are just one component of total business inventories.  Manufacturing and retail inventories make up the rest of total business inventories.  The market ignores this release and doesn't pay much attention to the full business inventory release that comes a few days later.  Improved inventory management in recent years has reduced the economic swings associated with inventories and has helped produce a long-term downtrend in the inventory-to-sales ratio.