FxWirePro: Daily Commodity Tracker - 21st March, 2022 
Total business inventories rose 0.3% m/m in September, well above forecast (-0.1%) and consensus (0.0%) expectations. Part of the better-than-expected result came from strong wholesale inventory growth reported earlier this week. Outside of wholesale inventories, about 0.1pp of the 0.3% m/m rise was driven by nonautomotive retail inventories. This series, the only piece of new information from the business inventories report with implications for GDP growth, rose 0.5% m/m.
The BEA had assumed a sharp 0.5% m/m decline for September in the advance estimate of Q3 GDP. Stronger-than-expected nonautomotive retail inventory growth in September, along with an upward revision to August, suggests that inventories were a much smaller drag on GDP growth than previously thought.
"We now estimate the change in private inventories subtracted 0.7pp from Q3 real GDP growth, half of the 1.4pp drag reported in the BEA's advance estimate. Our Q3 GDP tracking estimate rose four-tenths after rounding, to 2.1%", says Barclays.
