Heading south:

Sales in contraction year over year and inventories again elevated:

Highlights

Wholesale inventories rose 0.2 percent in August which is down from an initial estimate of 0.4 percent posted late last month. Inventories in July rose 0.2 percent.

Sales at the wholesale level are subdued, unchanged in August to keep the stock-to-sales ratio in the sector unchanged at 1.36. For GDP, wholesale inventories in the first two months of the third quarter rose roughly in line with the second-quarter build which would be neutral for the inventory component of third-quarter GDP.