Wolf Richter writes..
“In 30 years, I’ve never seen anything like this”: CEO of warehouse operator Pacific Mountain Logistics.
Sales at merchant wholesalers (except manufacturers’ sales branches and offices) fell 1% in December 2018, compared to November, to $497.2 billion on a seasonally adjusted basis, and inched up only 1% compared to December 2017, according to the Census Bureau estimates this morning.
But inventories at these wholesalers rose 1.1% from November and jumped 7.3% from December 2017, to $661.8 billion. Over the two-year period through December, inventories have risen 11%. This includes inventories of durable and non-durable goods (we’ll look at them separately in a moment):
https://wolfstreet.com/2019/02/25/inventory-pileup-sounds-alarm-for-goods-based-economy/
Separately,For everyone that thought the most recent retail sales print was a fluke, January and Feb credit card data still off a cliff.
One datapoint you should be looking at – which has been most bullish (for global manufacturing) last 10 years (8X vol growth), and double dipped in 2017-18 – not done yet. Linked to China slowdown as well…
https://www.statista.com/statistics/263441/global-smartphone-shipments-forecast/