Mubasher: US wholesale inventories expanded by the end of August at the same rate in July official final reading showed.

Wholesale inventories, excluding manufacturing sales branches, came in at $680.7 billion last August, rising by 0.2% from the revised $679.1 billion in the preceding month, the US Commerce Department’s Census Bureau said.

Stockpiles at wholesalers climbed by 6.2% in August, compared to the revised estimate in the same month of last year.

Sales of merchant wholesalers were virtually unchanged $499.1 billion month-on-month, but they fell by 0.7% from the same month of the prior year.

At August’s sales pace, wholesalers would take 1.36 months to clear shelves, unchanged from the same pace recorded in July, and faster than the ratio of 1.28 recorded in the same month last year.

By 1:55 pm GMT, the US dollar index, which tracks the greenback against a basket of six key peers, declined by 0.10% to 99.0310.