sales

Manufacturing & Trade Inventories & Sales for November 2009

The Manufacturing & Trade Inventories Sales report is out for November 2009. This report includes retailers, wholesalers and manufacturers.

Sales were up 2.0% from October 2009 and Inventories were up 0.4% from October 2009.

For the year to year comparison, sales are still down 0.4% from November 2008 and inventories were down 11.1% from November 2008. Remember in November 2008 the official recession has gone on for 11 months.

Sales to inventory ratios is now 1.28 for the month. This is actually good, yet don't get your panties all in a bunch until you read the below on wholesale data, released earlier in the week.

The more the inventory/sales ratio returns to pre-recession levels the more it is implied hiring will begin to manufacture new goods. Of course that also requires demand return to pre-recession levels.

Autos Now in the Tank - Sales Down to 1981 Levels

Remember in the 1980's (or look in your history books) on how important it was to buy American cars to support American workers?

Well, read the 2009 headlines:

GM, Ford Drag U.S. Sales to Worst Month Since ’81

General Motors Corp. and Ford Motor Co. said U.S. sales plummeted at least 40 percent in January and Toyota Motor Corp. dived by almost a third, dragging the world’s biggest auto market to the worst month since 1981.

U.S. industrywide deliveries tumbled 37 percent to 656,976 as the recession ravaged demand. That translates into an annual rate of 9.6 million after an average of more than 16 million vehicles in this decade, research firm Autodata Corp. said.

Dominoes - The latest Details on Financial Failures

financial dominoes

There are so many failures, mergers, sales going on, we're going to update them here.

Latest on the chopping block appears to be Morgan Stanley is considering a merger with Wachovia. I don't think this news is so bad, it appears they are simply trying to cover the possibility of a collapse, although it appears Wachovia would honor $494M of Lehman credits in it's Money market funds.

Morgan Stanley goes to China. Guess what they are doing, begging for funds.

hedge funds maybe next according to this article.