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News > Economy
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Business inventories rise
Backlog of unsold goods on businesses' shelves grows again in July, as sales also rose.
September 16, 2002: 8:38 AM EDT

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Inventories at U.S. businesses rose in July, the government said Monday, the third straight month of gains following a prolonged inventory selloff.

The Commerce Department said business inventories rose 0.4 percent after rising a revised 0.3 percent in June. Economists, on average, expected inventories to grow 0.2 percent in July, according to Briefing.com.

Sales rose 1.2 percent after rising 0.3 percent in June, and the ratio of inventories to sales was 1.35 months' worth, compared with 1.36 in June.

Wall Street yawned at the data, and stock market futures were mixed. Treasury bond prices were lower.

Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan and other economists have long warned that business spending would be the key to the economy's recovery from a recession that began in March 2001.

Recent gains in business inventories are hopeful signs that businesses have been spending more, but sales will also have to rise to keep inventories from growing too much. An inventory build-up contributed to a dramatic slowdown in manufacturing in 2000-2001.  Top of page




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Most stock quote data provided by BATS. Market indices are shown in real time, except for the DJIA, which is delayed by two minutes. All times are ET. Disclaimer. Morningstar: © 2018 Morningstar, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Factset: FactSet Research Systems Inc. 2018. All rights reserved. Chicago Mercantile Association: Certain market data is the property of Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. and its licensors. All rights reserved. Dow Jones: The Dow Jones branded indices are proprietary to and are calculated, distributed and marketed by DJI Opco, a subsidiary of S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC and have been licensed for use to S&P Opco, LLC and CNN. Standard & Poor's and S&P are registered trademarks of Standard & Poor's Financial Services LLC and Dow Jones is a registered trademark of Dow Jones Trademark Holdings LLC. All content of the Dow Jones branded indices © S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC 2018 and/or its affiliates.