Census's 1.18 Wholesale Ratio Mixes Cost and Selling Prices

Census's 1.18 Wholesale Ratio Mixes Cost and Selling Prices

The Census Bureau's 8 October wholesale report put August's inventories-to-sales ratio at 1.18, down from 1.28 a year earlier. That comparison uses inventory valued at cost and sales revenue that includes markup. The lower dollar ratio cannot, by itself, establish faster physical turnover of goods.

For an options researcher assessing business conditions, the valuation basis belongs beside the headline. A national wholesale ratio offers context for an issuer's results, but it supplies no company earnings forecast or executable option price.

Census released the August report at 10:00 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time on 8 October 2026, equivalent to midnight at the start of 9 October in Brisbane. This article was prepared at 07:08:33 Australia/Brisbane on Monday, 12 October. The latest completed relevant U.S. regular equity session was Friday, 9 October; NYSE's scheduled 16:00 EDT close corresponds to 06:00 Brisbane on Saturday. That is a calendar boundary. No closing price, option quote or market reaction is used here.

Reproduce the dollar ratio

Census reported $964.2 billion of inventories at the end of August and $817.5 billion of sales during August for merchant wholesalers, excluding manufacturers' sales branches and offices. Both figures are adjusted for seasonal variations and trading-day differences, but not for price changes.

Dividing the rounded headline values gives:

$964.2 billion / $817.5 billion = 1.17945, rounded to 1.18

This is author arithmetic from Census's released values. It describes about $1.18 of end-month inventory at cost for each $1 of that month's sales revenue. It does not measure how old the goods are or how many items sold. The published year-earlier ratio of 1.28 uses the same survey population and reported vintage.

Census defines inventories as merchandise on hand and available for sale at month-end, valued at cost. Its ratio definition expressly leaves the markup in sales unadjusted. Markup can differ across kinds of wholesale business.

That matters when comparing industries or dates. A change in the ratio can reflect the quantity or mix of goods, their recorded costs, selling prices and sales volume. A single aggregate ratio does not isolate those effects. Our manufacturing backlog article examines a separate problem, the industries included in a shipment denominator; wholesale inventory brings an additional valuation question.

Same units, lower ratio

Consider two fictional monthly records for a wholesaler. Each ends with 100 identical items in inventory and records 100 items sold during the month. Unit cost is $10 in both records. Only the selling price changes. These invented records explain the calculation and do not describe August's businesses.

In the first record, 100 end-month items at $10 cost give $1,000 of inventory. Selling 100 items at $12 produces $1,200 of monthly sales. The inventory-to-sales ratio is $1,000 / $1,200 = 0.83, rounded to two decimals.

In the second record, the wholesaler still holds 100 items at $10 cost and sells 100 items, now at $15 each. Inventory remains $1,000, while monthly sales become $1,500. The ratio is $1,000 / $1,500 = 0.67, rounded to two decimals.

Using the unrounded fractions, the ratio falls by 20%. Neither end-month stock units nor monthly units sold changed. Selling-price arithmetic alone produced the fall in this controlled example. It identifies a possible mechanism, not evidence that actual August markups increased or that demand, profits or inventory management improved.

Calling either result a guaranteed number of months needed to clear a warehouse would add assumptions about future sales pace, pricing and the goods themselves. These records also provide no average inventory or daily selling path from which to calculate a separate physical-turnover measure.

Keep the release vintage

The August column in the official report is preliminary; July and August 2025 are revised. Census's estimates carry sampling and nonsampling uncertainty. The exact-looking division does not remove that uncertainty or establish a statistically significant change in physical turnover.

Census's current revision notice tentatively schedules historical updates for 26 October 2026 at 10:00 a.m. EDT, based on corrections and the 2023 and 2024 Annual Integrated Economic Survey. That is midnight at the start of 27 October in Brisbane. The regular release schedule separately lists September's monthly report for 9 November. Neither future event has supplied new values for this article.

A saved research comparison needs the 8 October release, August reference month, preliminary/revised labels and cost-versus-revenue basis. If revised history changes the inputs, recalculate using the same vintage on both sides rather than combining a new numerator with an old denominator.

From wholesale data to an option contract

An issuer-level premise still needs the company's own disclosures about units, prices, costs, inventory and margins. Then preserve the option's underlying, strike, expiration, exercise and settlement terms, quote timestamp, bid, ask and available size. The options-chain guide and bid-ask guide explain those records. The wholesale ratio supplies no profitable direction, expected payoff or transaction price.

Options Matrix Pro publishes this article and offers commercial options-analysis software. This is general education, not personal financial, legal or tax advice or a recommendation to trade. Buyers can lose their premium; sellers can face substantial losses and assignment obligations. Liquidity, concentration, transaction costs, exercise funding, settlement and taxes remain position- and account-specific. Read the current OCC options disclosure and FINRA's options-risk guidance. If a research premise treats 1.18 as a physical turnover measurement, correct the valuation assumption before using it to compare contracts.

Sources and scope

• Census Bureau, August 2026 Monthly Wholesale Trade release, CB26-152, released 8 October 2026. National merchant-wholesaler dollar estimates, excluding manufacturers' sales branches and offices.
• Official August report PDF. Release clock, preliminary/revised labels, Table 1, sampling limits and tentative revision. This current-release URL rotates.
• Census wholesale definitions. Inventory at cost and unadjusted sales markup in the ratio.
• Census wholesale main-page revision notice and regular release schedule. Tentative historical revision and next reference-month report are separate events.
• NYSE hours and calendars. Regular-equity session boundary only.
• FINRA, Options and OCC's current options-disclosure gateway. General loss, assignment, funding and disclosure context.

Sources accessed 12 October 2026 Australia/Brisbane. Census supplied the original estimates; the ratio reconstruction and fictional example are author calculations. No individual investment recommendation or market-price observation is made.