A brief excerpt:
Last year inventory bottomed seasonally in April 2021 – very late in the year. This year, by this measure, it appears inventory bottomed seasonally at the beginning of March (we need a few more weeks of increasing inventory to confirm this).
Inventory is still very low. Compared to the same week in 2021, inventory is down 21.7%, and compared to the same week in 2020, and inventory is down 65.9% from 730 thousand.
One of the keys will be to watch the year-over-year change each week to see if the declines are decreasing. Here is a table of the year-over-year change by week since the beginning of the year.
Week Ending YoY Change 12/31/2021 -30.0% 1/7/2022 -26.0% 1/14/2022 -28.6% 1/21/2022 -27.1% 1/28/2022 -25.9% 2/4/2022 -27.9% 2/11/2022 -27.5% 2/18/2022 -25.8% 2/25/2022 -24.9% 3/4/2022 -24.2% 3/11/2022 -21.7%
Last week I wrote: “Based on the trend, it appears possible inventory bottomed seasonally last week, and will be up week-over-week in the next report.” That happened.Now we need to watch if the YoY change continues to decrease. Based on the current trend, it is possible inventory will be up YoY later this year.
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